There are other pyramids and ruins in Ethiopia that would be worthy of
extended notice, but that they are so far surpassed in number and
magnificence by those already described. The principal of these are
found at Merawe, the former capital of Darshygeea, to the north-west of
Meroë, where the Nile, flowing south-west, reaches the frontier of
Dongola. This Merawe must not be confounded with Meroë, the ruins of
which have just been described. The identity of the sounds of the names,
did, indeed, at first deceive 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 latitude eighteen degrees, thirty-five minutes,
or thereabouts.
As the traveler already quoted, rose in the morning, to go over to the
mountain and the ruins at its base, “I was,” says he, “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, everywhere 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. We rode under a cluster of
ruined stone buildings, one of which occupied considerable space, rising
pylon-like, to the hight 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. 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 hight of five hundred
feet, presenting a front completely perpendicular toward the river. It
is inaccessible on all sides except the north, which in one place has an
inclination of forty-five degrees. 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 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 toward 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.
“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 molding; 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 molding 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 hight, 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.
“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. 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 toward 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 travelers who came there
broke off a piece and carried it away with them. I did not follow their
example. Toward 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.”