THREE DAYS AT NAPATA.
Our whereabouts—Shekh Mohammed Abd e’-Djebàl—My residence
at Abdôm—Crossing the River—A Superb Landscape—The Town of
Merawe—Ride to Djebel Berkel—The Temples of Napata—Ascent of
the Mountain—Ethiopian Panorama—Lost and Found—The Pyramids—The
Governor of Merawe—A Scene in the Divan—The Shekh and I—The
Governor Dines with me—Ruins of the City of Napata—A Talk about
Religions—Engaging Camels for Wadi-Halfa—The Shekh’s Parting
Blessing.
“Under the palm-trees by the river’s side.”—KEATS.
Abdôm, the friendly haven into which I had drifted after an eight days’
voyage in the fiery sea of the Desert, is a village on the eastern bank
of the Nile, which, after passing Abou-Hammed, flows to the south-west
and south until it reaches the frontier of Dongola. On the opposite
bank is Merawe, the former capital of Dar Shygheea, which must not be
confounded with the ancient Meroë, the ruins of which, near Shendy, I
have already described. True, the identity of the names at first deceived
antiquarians, who supposed the temples and pyramids in this neighborhood
to have belonged to the capital of the old Hierarchy of Meroë; but it is
now satisfactorily established that they mark the site of Napata, the
capital of Ethiopia up to the time of the Cæsars. It was the limit of
the celebrated expedition of the Roman soldiers, under Petronius. Djebel
Berkel, at whose base the principal remains are found, is in lat. 18°
35′, or thereabouts.
[Illustration: Shekh Abd e’-Djebàl.]
I was welcomed to Abdôm by the Shekh or holy man of the place, who met
me on the verge of the Desert, and conducted me to the best of his
two houses. Shekh Mohammed, Abd e’-Djebàl (Mohammed, the Slave of the
Mountains), was a dignified old man of sixty, with a gray beard and
brown complexion, and was the owner of a water-mill, several fields of
wheat and cotton, and an abundance of palm-trees. He had two wives,
each of whom, with her family, occupied a separate house—a great mark
of discretion on the part of Mohammed. Domestic quiet was thus secured
to him, while he possessed that in which the Arab most glories and
rejoices—a numerous family of children. His youngest wife, a woman of
thirty, immediately vacated the house on my arrival, and took up her
temporary residence in a tent of palm-matting, with her four children.
The dwelling into which I was ushered was a square structure of clay,
one story high, with one door and no windows. It had a flat roof of palm
logs, covered with thatch, and the inside walls were hung with large
mats, plaited with brilliantly-colored palm blades. Fancy vessels of
baked clay, baskets, ostrich eggs, and other ornaments were suspended
from the roof in slings of palm fibre, and a very large white mat covered
half the floor. Here my bed was laid, and my camp-stool, placed in front
of it, formed a table. The Shekh, who was with me nearly all the time of
my stay, sat on the floor in front of me, and never entered or departed
from the house, without saying “_Bismillàhi_” (“in the name of God”), as
he crossed the threshold. Outside of the door was a broad divan, running
along the north side of the house. It therefore pointed towards Mecca
and was a most agreeable praying-place for the holy man. On my arrival,
after first having taken a bath in the Nile, I sat there the rest of the
day, tasting the luxury of coolness and shade, and steeping my eyes in
the balm of refreshing colors. A clump of some twenty date-trees grew in
front of the door, throwing over us a gorgeous canopy of leaves. Fields
of wheat in head, waist-deep, surrounded the house, insulating it in a
sea of greenness, over which I saw the hills of the Desert, no longer
terrible, but soft and fair and far as clouds smouldering in the roseate
fires of an Eastern sunrise.
Very early the next morning the Shekh and his sons and their asses were
in readiness to accompany me to Djebel Berkel. We walked down between the
Shekh’s gardens to the Nile, where the ferry-boat was waiting to convey
us across. I was enchanted with the picture which the shores presented.
The air was filled with a light, silvery vapor (a characteristic of
sultry weather in Africa), softening the deep, rich color of the
landscape. The eastern bank was one bower of palms, standing motionless,
in perfect groups, above the long, sloping banks of beans in blossom.
Such grace and glory, such silence and repose, I thought I had never
before seen in the vegetable world. Opposite, the ruined palaces of the
old Shygheean Kings and the mud and stone hovels of modern Merawe rose
in picturesque piles above the river bank and below the red sandstone
bluffs of the Nubian Desert, which overhung them and poured the sand
through deep rents and fissures upon their very roofs. The mosque, with
a tall, circular minaret, stood embowered in a garden of date-palms,
under one of the highest bluffs. Up the river, which stretched glittering
into the distance, the forest of trees shut out the view of the Desert,
except Djebel Berkel, which stood high and grand above them, the
morning painting its surface with red lights and purple shadows. Over
the misty horizon of the river rose a single conical peak, far away.
The sky was a pale, sleepy blue, and all that I saw seemed beautiful
dream-pictures—every where grace, beauty, splendor of coloring, steeped
in Elysian repose. It is impossible to describe the glory of that passage
across the river. It paid me for all the hardships of the Desert.
When we touched the other shore and mounted the little donkeys we had
taken across with us, the ideal character of the scene disappeared, but
left a reality picturesque and poetic enough. The beasts were without
bridles, and were only furnished with small wooden saddles, without
girths or stirrups. One was obliged to keep his poise, and leave the rest
to the donkey, who, however, suffered himself to be guided by striking
the side of his neck. We rode under a cluster of ruined stone buildings,
one of which occupied considerable space, rising pylon-like, to the
height of thirty feet. The Shekh informed me that it had been the palace
of a Shygheean king, before the Turks got possession of the country. It
was wholly dilapidated, but a few Arab families were living in the stone
dwellings which surround it. These clusters of shattered buildings extend
for more than a mile along the river, and are all now known as Merawe.
Our road led between fields of ripening wheat, rolling in green billows
before the breeze, on one side, and on the other, not more than three
yards distant, the naked sandstone walls of the Desert, where a blade of
grass never grew. Over the wheat, along the bank of the Nile, rose a long
forest of palms, so thickly ranged that the eye could scarcely penetrate
their dense, cool shade; while on the other hand the glaring sand-hills
showed their burning shoulders above the bluffs. It was a most violent
contrast, and yet, withal, there was a certain harmony in these opposite
features. A remarkably fat man, riding on a donkey, met us. The Shekh
compared him to a hippopotamus, and said that his fat came from eating
mutton and drinking _om bilbil_ day and night. At the end of the town we
came to a sort of guard-house, shaded by two sycamores. A single soldier
was in attendance, and apparently tired of having nothing to do, as he
immediately caught his donkey and rode with us to Djebel Berkel.
We now approached the mountain, which is between three and four miles
from the town. It rises from out the sands of the Nubian Desert, to the
height of five hundred feet, presenting a front completely perpendicular
towards the river. It is inaccessible on all sides except the north,
which in one place has an inclination of 45°. Its scarred and shattered
walls of naked sandstone stand up stern and sublime in the midst of
the hot and languid landscape. As we approached, a group of pyramids
appeared on the brow of a sand-hill to the left, and I discerned at the
base of the mountain several isolated pillars, the stone-piles of ruined
pylons, and other remains of temples. The first we reached was at the
south-eastern corner of the mountain. Amid heaps of sandstone blocks and
disjointed segments of pillars, five columns of an exceedingly old form
still point out the court of a temple, whose adyta are hewn within in the
mountain. They are not more than ten feet high and three in diameter,
circular, and without capital or abacus, unless a larger block, rudely
sculptured with the outlines of a Typhon-head, may be considered as such.
The doorway is hurled down and defaced, but the cartouches of kings
may still be traced on the fragments. There are three chambers in the
rock, the walls of which are covered with sculptures, for the most part
representing the Egyptian divinities. The temple was probably dedicated
to Typhon, or the Evil Principle, as one of the columns is still faced
with a caryatid of the short, plump, big-mouthed and bat-eared figure,
which elsewhere represents him. Over the entrance is the sacred winged
globe, and the ceiling shows the marks of brilliant coloring. The temple
is not remarkable for its architecture, and can only be interesting in an
antiquarian point of view. It bears some resemblance in its general style
to the Temple-palace of Goorneh, at Thebes.
The eastern base of the mountain, which fronts the Nile, is strewn with
hewn blocks, fragments of capitals, immense masses of dark bluish-gray
granite, and other remains, which prove that a large and magnificent
temple once stood there. The excavations made by Lepsius and others have
uncovered the substructions sufficiently to show the general plan of
two buildings. The main temple was at the north-eastern corner of the
mountain, under the highest point of its perpendicular crags. The remains
of its small propylons stand in advance, about two hundred yards from the
rock, going towards which you climb the mound formed by the ruins of a
large pylon, at the foot of which are two colossal ram-headed sphinxes of
blue granite, buried to their necks in the sand. Beyond this is a portico
and pillared court, followed by other courts and labyrinths of chambers.
Several large blocks of granite, all more or less broken and defaced, lie
on the surface or half quarried from the rubbish. They are very finely
polished and contain figures of kings, evidently arranged in genealogical
order, each accompanied with his name. The shekh had a great deal to tell
me of the Franks, who dug up all the place, and set the people to work
at hauling away the lions and rams, which they carried off in ships. I
looked in vain for the celebrated pedestal; it has probably become the
spoil of Lepsius.
While taking a sketch of the mountain from the eastern side, I found the
heat almost insupportable. The shekh looked over my shoulder all the
time, and at the end pronounced it _temam_—“perfect.” I then proposed
climbing the mountain, as he had said one could see the whole world from
the top. He was bound to go with me wherever I went, but shrank from
climbing El Berkel. It would require two hours, he said, to go up. After
eating a slice of watermelon in the shade of one of the pillars, I took
off my jacket and started alone, and very soon he was at my side, panting
and sweating with the exertion. We began at the point most easy of ascent
yet found it toilsome enough. After passing the loose fragments which lie
scattered around the base, we came upon a steep slope of sliding sand
and stones, blown from the desert We sank in this nearly to the knees,
and slid backward at each step at least half as far as we had stepped
forward. We were obliged to rest every three or four steps, and take
breath, moistening the sand meanwhile with a rain of sweat-drops, “Surely
there is no other mountain in the world so high as this,” said the shekh,
and I was ready to agree with him. At last we reached the top, a nearly
level space of about ten acres. There was a pleasant breeze here, but the
Ethiopian world below was dozing in an atmosphere of blue heat. There was
too much vapor in the air to see the farthest objects distinctly, and the
pyramids of Noori, further up the river, on its eastern bank, were not
visible. The Nile lay curved in the middle of the picture like a flood
of molten glass, on either side its palmy “knots of paradise,” then the
wheat fields, lying like slabs of emerald against the tawny sands, that
rolled in hot drifts and waves and long ridgy swells to the horizon north
and south, broken here and there by the jagged porphyry peaks. Before me,
to the south-east, were the rugged hills of the Beyooda; behind me, to
the north and west, the burning wilderness of the Great Nubian Desert.
As I sought for my glass, to see the view more distinctly, I became aware
that I had lost my pocket-book on the way up. As it contained some money
and all my keys, I was not a little troubled, and mentioned my loss to
Shekh Mohammed. We immediately returned in search of it, sliding down the
sand and feeling with our hands and feet therein. We had made more than
half the descent, and I began to consider the search hopeless, when the
shekh, who was a little in advance, cried out: “O Sidi! God be praised!
God be praised!” He saw the corner sticking out of the sand, took it up,
kissed it, and laid it on one eye, while he knelt with his old head
turned up, that I might take it off. I tied it securely in a corner of
my shawl and we slid to the bottom, where we found Achmet and the young
shekhs in the shade of a huge projecting cliff, with breakfast spread out
on the sand.
It was now noon, and only the pyramids remained to be seen on that
side of the river. The main group is about a third of a mile from the
mountain, on the ridge of a sand-hill. There are six pyramids, nearly
entire, and the foundations of others. They are almost precisely similar
to those of the real Meroë, each having a small exterior chamber on the
eastern side. Like the latter, they are built of sandstone blocks, only
filled at the corners, which are covered with a hem or moulding; the
sides of two of them are convex. On all of them the last eight or ten
courses next the top have been smoothed to follow the slope of the side.
It was no doubt intended to finish them all in this manner. One of them
has also the corner moulding rounded, so as to form a scroll, like that
on the cornice of many of the Egyptian temples. They are not more than
fifty feet in height, with very narrow bases. One of them, indeed, seems
to be the connecting link between the pyramid and the obelisk. Nearer the
river is an older pyramid, though no regular courses of stone are to be
seen any longer. These sepulchral remains, however, are much inferior to
those of Meroë.
The oldest names found at Napata are those of Amenoph III. and Remeses
II. (1630 B. C. and 1400 B. C.) both of whom subjected Nubia to their
rule. The remains of Ethiopian art, however, go no further than King
Tirkaka, 730 B. C.—the Ethiopian monarch, who, in the time of Hezekiah,
marched into Palestine to meet Sennacherib, King of Assyria. Napata,
therefore, occupies an intermediate place in history between Thebes
and Meroë, showing the gradual southward progress of Egyptian art and
civilization. It is a curious fact that the old religion of Egypt should
have been here met face to face, and overthrown, by Christianity, which,
starting in the mountains of Abyssinia, followed the course of the Nile
northward. In the sixth century of our era, Ethiopia and Nubia were
converted to Christianity and remained thus until the fourteenth century,
when they fell beneath the sword of Islam.
We rode back to the town on our uneasy donkey saddles. As I wanted small
money, the shekh proposed my calling on Achmedar Kashif, the Governor
of Merawe and Ambukol, and asking him to change me some _medjids_. We
accordingly rode under the imposing stone piles of the old kings to the
residence of the Kashif, a two-story mud house with a portico in front,
covered with matting. It was the day for the people of the neighborhood
to pay their _tulbeh_, or tax, and some of his officers were seated on
the ground in the shade, settling this business with a crowd of Arabs.
I went up stairs to the divan, and found the Kashif rolling himself in
his shawl for dinner, which his slaves had just brought up. He received
me cordially, and I took my seat beside him on the floor and dipped my
fingers into the various dishes. There was a pan of baked fish, which was
excellent, after which came a tray of scarlet watermelon slices, coffee,
pipes, and lastly a cup of hot sugar syrup. He readily promised to change
me the money, and afterwards accepted my invitation to dinner.
I stayed an hour longer, and had an opportunity of witnessing some
remarkable scenes. A woman came in to complain of her husband, who had
married another woman, leaving her with one child. She had a cow of her
own which he had forcibly taken and given to his new wife. The Kashif
listened to her story, and then detaching his seal from his buttonhole,
gave it to an attendant, as a summons which the delinquent dare not
disobey. A company of men afterwards came to adjust some dispute about
a water-mill. They spoke so fast and in such a violent and excited
manner, that I could not comprehend the nature of the quarrel; but the
group they made was most remarkable. They leaned forward with flashing
teeth and eyes, holding the folds of their long mantles with one hand,
while they dashed and hurled the other in the air, in the violence of
their contention. One would suppose that they must all perish the next
instant by spontaneous combustion. The Kashif was calmness itself all
the while, and after getting the particulars—a feat which I considered
marvellous—quietly gave his decision. Some of the party protested against
it, whereupon he listened attentively, but, finding no reason to change
his judgment, repeated it. Still the Arabs screamed and gesticulated.
He ejaculated _imshee!_ (“get away!”) in a thundering tone, dealt the
nearest ones a vigorous blow with his fist, and speedily cleared the
divan. The Kashif offered to engage camels and a guide for New Dongola,
in case I chose to go by the Nubian Desert—a journey of three or four
days, through a terrible waste of sand and rocks, without grass or water.
The route being new, had some attractions, but I afterwards decided
to adhere to my original plan of following the course of the river to
Ambukol and Old Dongola.
I made preparations for giving the Kashif a handsome dinner. I had mutton
and fowls, and Achmet procured eggs milk and vegetables, and set his
whole available force to work. Meanwhile the shekh and I sat on the
divan outside the door, and exchanged compliments. He sold me a sword
from Bornou, which he had purchased from an Arab merchant who had worn
it to Mecca. He told me he considered me as his two eyes, and would give
me one of his sons, if I desired. Then he rendered me an account of his
family, occasionally pointing out the members thereof, as they passed
to and fro among the palms. He asked me how many children I had, and
I was obliged to confess myself wholly his inferior in this respect.
“God grant,” said he, “that when you go back to your own country, you
may have many sons, just like that one,” pointing to a naked Cupidon of
four years old, of a rich chocolate-brown color. “God grant it,” I was
obliged to reply, conformably to the rules of Arab politeness, but I
mentally gave the words the significance of “God forbid it!” The shekh,
who was actually quite familiar with the ruins in Ethiopia, and an
excellent guide to them, informed me that they were four thousand years
old; that the country was at that time in possession of the English, but
afterwards the Arabs drove them out. This corresponds with an idea very
prevalent in Egypt, that the temples were built by the forefathers of
the Frank travellers, who once lived there, and that is the reason why
the Franks make a _hadj_, or pilgrimage to see them. I related to the
shekh the history of the warlike Queen Candace, who once lived there, in
her capital of Napata, and he was so much interested in the story that
he wrote it down, transforming her name into _Kandasiyeh_. Some later
traveller will be surprised to find a tradition of the aforesaid queen,
no doubt with many grotesque embellishments, told him on the site of her
capital.
Dinner was ready at sunset, the appointed time, but the Kashif did
not come. I waited one hour, two hours; still he came not. Thereupon
I invited Achmet and the shekh, and we made an excellent dinner in
Turkish style. It was just over, and I was stretched out without jacket
or tarboosh, enjoying my pipe, when we heard the ferrymen singing on
the river below, and soon afterwards the Kashif appeared at the door.
He apologized, saying he had been occupied in his divan. I had dinner
served again, and tasted the dishes to encourage him, but it appeared
that he had not been able to keep his appetite so long, and had dined
also. Still, he ate enough to satisfy me that he relished my dishes,
and afterwards drank a sherbet of sugar and vinegar with great gusto.
He had three or four attendants, and with him came a Berber merchant,
who had lately been in Khartoum. I produced my sketch-book and maps,
and astonished the company for three hours. I happened to have a book
of Shaksperean views, which I had purchased in Stratford-on-Avon. The
picture of Shakspere gave the Kashif and shekh great delight, and the
former considered the hovel in which the poet was born, “very grand.” The
church in Stratford they thought a marvellous building, and the merchant
confessed that it was greater than Lattif Pasha’s palace in Khartoum,
which he had supposed to be the finest building in the world.
The next morning the shekh proposed going with me to the remains of a
temple, half an hour distant, on the eastern bank of the river; the
place, he said, where the people found the little images, agates and
scarabei, which they brought to me in great quantities. After walking a
mile and a half over the sands, which have here crowded the vegetation to
the very water’s edge, we came to a broad mound of stones, broken bricks
and pottery, with a foundation wall of heavy limestone blocks, along the
western side. There were traces of doors and niches, and on the summit of
the mound the pedestals of columns similar to those of El Berkel. From
this place commenced a waste of ruins, extending for nearly two miles
towards the north-west, while the breadth, from east to west, was about
equal. For the most part, the buildings were entirely concealed by the
sand, which was filled with fragments of pottery and glass, and with
shining pebbles of jasper, agate and chalcedony. Half a mile further, we
struck on another mound, of greater extent, though the buildings were
entirely level with the earth. The foundations of pillars were abundant,
and fragments of circular limestone blocks lay crumbling to pieces in
the rubbish. The most interesting object was a mutilated figure of blue
granite, of which only a huge pair of wings could be recognized. The
shekh said that all the Frank travellers who came there broke off a piece
and carried it away with them. I did not follow their example. Towards
the river were many remains of crude brick walls, and the ground was
strewn with pieces of excellent hard-burnt bricks. The sand evidently
conceals many interesting objects. I saw in one place, where it had
fallen in, the entrance to a chamber, wholly below the surface. The Arabs
were at work in various parts of the plain, digging up the sand, which
they filled in baskets and carried away on donkeys. The shekh said it
contained salt, and was very good to make wheat grow, whence I inferred
that the earth is nitrous. We walked for an hour or two over the ruins,
finding everywhere the evidence that a large capital had once stood on
the spot. The bits of water jars which we picked up were frequently
painted and glazed with much skill. The soil was in many places wholly
composed of the debris of the former dwellings. This was, without doubt,
the ancient Napata, of which Djebel Berkel was only the necropolis.
Napata must have been one of the greatest cities of Ancient Africa, after
Thebes, Memphis and Carthage. I felt a peculiar interest in wandering
over the site of that half-forgotten capital, whereof the ancient
historians knew little more than we. That so little is said by them in
relation to it is somewhat surprising, notwithstanding its distance from
the Roman frontier.
In the afternoon, Achmet, with great exertion, backed by all the
influence of the Kashif, succeeded in obtaining ten piastres worth of
bread. The latter sent me the shekh of the camels, who furnished me with
three animals and three men, to Wadi Halfa, at ninety-five piastres
apiece. They were to accompany my caravan to Ambukol, on the Dongolese
frontier where the camels from Khartoum were to be discharged. I spent
the rest of the day talking with the shekh on religious matters. He gave
me the history of Christ, in return for which I related to him that of
the Soul of Mahomet, from one hundred and ten thousand years before the
Creation of the World, until his birth, according to the Arab Chronicles.
This quite overcame him. He seized my hand and kissed it with fervor,
acknowledging me as the more holy man of the two. He said he had read the
Books of Moses, the Psalms of David and the Gospel of Christ, but liked
David best, whose words flowed like the sound of the _zumarra_, or Arab
flute. To illustrate it, he chanted one of the Psalms in a series of not
unmusical cadences. He then undertook to repeat the ninety attributes of
God, and thought he succeeded, but I noticed that several of the epithets
were repeated more than once.
The north wind increased during the afternoon, and towards night blew a
very gale. The sand came in through the door in such quantities that I
was obliged to move my bed to a more sheltered part of my house. Numbers
of huge black beetles, as hard and heavy as grape-shot, were dislodged
from their holes and dropped around me with such loud raps that I was
scarcely able to sleep. The sky was dull and dark, hardly a star to be
seen, and the wind roared in the palms like a November gale let loose
among the boughs of a Northern forest. It was a grand roar, drowning the
sharp rustle of the leaves when lightly stirred, and rocked my fancies
as gloriously as the pine. In another country than Africa, I should have
predicted rain, hail, equinoctial storms, or something of the kind, but
there I went to sleep with a positive certainty of sunshine on the morrow.
I was up at dawn, and had breakfast by sunrise; nevertheless, we were
obliged to wait a long while for the camels, or rather the pestiferous
Kababish who went after them. The new men and camels were in readiness,
as the camel-shekh came over the river to see that all was right. The
Kashif sent me a fine black ram, as provision for the journey. Finally,
towards eight o’clock, every thing was in order and my caravan began to
move. I felt real regret at leaving the pleasant spot, especially the
beautiful bower of palms at the door of my house. When my effects had
been taken out, the shekh called his eldest son Saad, his wife Fatima,
and their two young sons, to make their salaams. They all kissed my hand,
and I then gave the old man and Saad my backsheesh for their services.
The shekh took the two gold medjids readily, without any hypocritical
show of reluctance, and lifted my hand to his lips and forehead. When all
was ready, he repeated the _Fatha_, or opening paragraph of the Koran, as
each camel rose from its knees, in order to secure the blessing of Allah
upon our journey. He then took me in his arms, kissed both my cheeks, and
with tears in his eyes, stood showering pious phrases after me, till I
was out of hearing. With no more vanity or selfishness than is natural to
an Arab, Shekh Mohammed Abd e’-Djebàl had many excellent qualities, and
there are few of my Central African acquaintances whom I would rather see
again.