Gobat, had lived for a long time in Abyssinia, and is also well known to
linguists by his grammar of the Amharic language. A young girl from Basle
was under his protection—Rosina Dietrich, the bride of the missionary
Krapf, who has married her here, and is now going to return with her
and his colleagues, Isenberg and Mühleisen, to the English missionary
station in Schoa, by the next Indian steamer. He was married in the
English chapel, and I was present as a witness at the ceremony, which was
performed with simplicity and feeling.
On our arrival, on the 18th September, we found Erbkam, Ernest
Weidenbach, and Franke, already here. They had been waiting for us
several days.
Mohammed Ali had put to sea with the fleet, as he was impatiently
expecting the arrival of Sami Bey, who was to bring him intelligence of
the desired reduction of tribute; in place of which, he had received the
appointment of Grand Vizier.
The Swedish Consul-General, d’Anastasi, who as the representative of our
Consul-General Von Wagner, still absent, manages the affairs of Prussia,
and who enters with zeal into all our interests, presented us to-day to
the Viceroy, and we have just returned from the audience. He expressed
himself much pleased with the vases, which I delivered to the Pascha in
the name of our Sovereign, and he felt himself still more honoured by the
King’s letter, of which he immediately ordered a written translation to
be made, and perused it with great attention in our presence, and desired
that I should be informed that he would give me the answer when we should
again leave the country. We were received, and dismissed standing; coffee
was handed to us, and he showed us other attentions, some of which were
afterwards carefully explained to me by d’Anastasi. Boghos Bey, his
confidential minister, was the only one present, and remained standing
all the time. Mohammed Ali appeared to be cheerful, and youthful in his
actions and conversation; no debility was visible in the features and
flashing eye of the old man of seventy-three. He spoke with interest of
his expeditions up the Nile, and assured us he intended to repeat them,
till he should have found the sources of the White River. On my inquiring
about his Museum in Cairo, he replied, that it certainly had not hitherto
been very successful, but that frequently, when rapid progress was
expected in his enterprises, unjust claims were made on him relative to
these matters in Europe; since he was compelled first to obtain a basis
and foundation, which, with us, had long been prepared. I only cursorily
alluded to our excavations; and in the course of conversation assumed
that he had granted us permission to make them; this I am soon to receive
in due form.[3]
[Illustration: EGYPT, NUBIA AND THE UPPER NILE
to illustrate the
_LETTERS OF DR. LEPSIUS_.]
LETTER III.
_Cairo, the 16th October, 1842._
We were detained almost fourteen days in Alexandria. The whole time
was spent in preparations for our farther journey. I saw the Pascha
several times again, and found him always favourably inclined towards
our expedition. But we had gained little in a scientific point of view.
We visited Pompey’s Pillar, which has nevertheless no connection with
Pompey, but, as we learn by the Greek inscription on the base, was placed
there by the Prefect Publius, in honour of the Emperor Diocletian. The
blocks of the foundation are partly fragments of older buildings; the
Royal Ring of the second Psammeticus could still be recognised upon one
of them.
The two obelisks, of which the one still standing is called Cleopatra’s
Needle, are very much destroyed on the sides which are exposed to the
weather, and in part have become totally illegible. They were erected
by THUTMOSIS III., in the sixteenth century before Christ; at a later
period RAMSES MIAMUN has inscribed his name, and still later, on the
outermost borders of the four sides, another king, who proved to be
hitherto wholly unknown, and was therefore gladly greeted by me. I must
also mention an interesting collection of objects of every sort connected
with ethnography and natural history, which was made by Werne, a native
of Prussia, during the second expedition of the Pascha up the Nile, as
far as the White River, in lands till then unknown, and which a few
months previously had been conveyed to Alexandria.[4] It appeared to me
of such value, and to be so unique in its kind, that I have purchased it
for our Museums. While we were still there, it was packed up, ready to be
despatched. I think it will be welcome in Berlin.
At length the Bujurldis (Firman) of the Pascha was ready, and we hastened
to quit Alexandria. We embarked the same day that I received it (the
30th September), on the Mahmudieh canal. Darkness surprised us before
we had accomplished this first difficult departure. It was nine o’clock
before we drove off from our hotel, on the extensive and beautiful
Frank-square, in two carriages belonging to M. d’Anastasi, preceded by
the customary runners with torches. The gate was opened at the watchword
that had been given to us; our baggage had already been conveyed to the
boat some hours previously on camels, so that we were able to depart very
soon after our entrance into the roomy vessel, which I had hired in the
morning. The Nile, which we entered at Atfeh, had tolerably high waves,
as the wind was strong and unfavourable. The usual mode of navigation
here, is with two pointed sails, which rise upwards like the wings of a
bee; these are easily beaten down, by every violent gust of wind, not
without danger, especially in the dark. I therefore granted the sailors
permission to stop every stormy night.
The following day, the 2nd of October, we landed at SA EL HAGER to
visit the ruins of ancient SAIS, the city of the Psammetici, famous by
its temple to Minerva. The circular walls of the town, built of bricks
of Nile earth, and the deserted ruins of the houses, are alone extant;
there are no remains of stone buildings with inscriptions. We paced the
circumference of the city, and made a simple plan of the locality. The
Acropolis was situated to the north-west of the town, which is even now
marked by tolerably high mounds of rubbish. We spent the night at NEKLEH.
I have got the great maps of the “Description de l’Egypte” beside me, on
which we were able to trace almost every step of our excursions. We have
hitherto found it almost everywhere to be depended upon.
The 3rd of October we landed on the western bank, to inspect the remains
of the old Rosetta canal, and spent almost the whole afternoon till
sunset in examining the ruins of an old town near NAHARIEH. No walls
are now visible, only mounds of rubbish, yet we found in the houses of
the modern town several stones with inscriptions, chiefly built into
door-sills, which had originally belonged to a temple of King Psammeticus
I. and APRIES (Hophre). The next night we stopped on the western bank at
TEIRIEH, and landed there the following morning to search for some ruins,
an hour distant from the bank, but from which we obtained nothing. The
Libyan desert here for the first time advances quite close to the Nile,
and presented us with a new and deeply impressive sight.
On the following morning, we first saw the Great Pyramids of Memphis,
rising above the horizon; I could not for a long time take my eyes off
them. We still continued to sail on the Rosetta arm; about mid-day we
reached the so-called Cowsbelly, where the Nile divides into its two
principal arms. Now for the first time we were able to survey the noble,
wonderful river in its whole magnitude, which with its fertilising and
sweet-tasting water, influences the life and manners of the inhabitants
on its banks like no other river in the world. It usually attains
its greatest height about the beginning of October. But this year an
inundation has occurred, such as has not been remembered for generations
past. A breach in the dams is dreaded, which after the great murrain,
that is said to have carried off up to the last week forty thousand head
of cattle, would cause Egypt to be afflicted a second time this year.
About five o’clock in the evening we arrived at BULAQ, the harbour
of Cairo. We rode at once from the harbour to the town, and made
arrangements for a considerable stay. By-the-by, when we say CAIRO, and
the French LA CAIRE, it proceeds from a pure error in language. The town
is never called anything by the Arabs now, but MASR, and the country the
same; that is the old Semetic name, which is more easily pronounced by
us in the dual termination Mis’raim. It was only in the tenth century,
when the present city was founded, that the modern Masr, by the addition
EL QAHIREH, that is “the victorious,” was distinguished from the earlier
MASR EL ATIQEH, the present Old Cairo. The Italians then omitted the _h_,
which they could not pronounce, mistook the Arabic article EL for their
masculine IL, and thus by its termination also, stamped the whole word as
masculine.
It was just the commencement of the Musulmans’ holy fasting month, the
Ramadan, during which they neither take food, nor “drink smoke or water”
the whole day, and receive no visits, but only begin the whole business
of life after sunset; thus completely changing day and night, which, on
account of our Arabian servants, causes us much inconvenience. Our Kawass
(the Pascha’s guard of honour that had been given us), which had missed
the time of our departure from Alexandria, established itself here. As
our Prussian vice-consul is out of health, I applied to the Austrian
consul, M. Champion, to whom I had been warmly recommended by Ehrenberg,
with respect to our being presented to the representatives of the Pascha
at this place. He received us with the greatest politeness and anxiety
to serve us, and has obtained for us everywhere a good reception. On
my official visits, which, on account of the Ramadan, were necessarily
made about eight o’clock in the evening, I was usually accompanied by
Erbkam and Bonomi. Our torch-bearers ran before us, then followed on
asses, first the Dragoman of the consul, and our Pascha’s Kawass, then we
ourselves, in stately procession. We rode almost across the whole town to
the Citadel, through the narrow streets, which were filled with Arabs,
and picturesquely illuminated by our torches, there we first paid a visit
to Abbas Pascha,[5] a grandson of Mehemet Ali. He is governor of Cairo,
but rarely there. From him we went to Scherif Pascha, his representative,
and then to the minister of war, Ahmet Pascha. We were everywhere
received with great courtesy.
On the day after our arrival, I received a diploma as honorary member of
the older Egyptian Society, from which the younger one, which had already
forwarded to London the same invitation to me, has separated. Both held
meetings during the first days after our arrival, but I was only able
to attend one of them, in which an interesting paper was read by Krapf,
on certain nations in Central Africa. The accounts were given him by a
native of the country of Enarea, who had travelled into the country of
the Doko on mercantile business, and describes the people there very much
as Herodotus describes the Libyan dwarf nation, according to the account
of the Nasamonians, namely, as composed entirely of little people, about
the size of children from ten to twelve years old. We might almost
imagine that they were speaking of apes. As the geographical notices of
the hitherto wholly unknown land of the Doko are also interesting, I had
the whole paper copied, in order to send it along with the small map
which belongs to it, to our venerated Ritter.[6]
On the 13th of October we made our first excursion from this place to
the ruins of HELIOPOLIS, the biblical _On_, whence Joseph took his wife
Asnath, the daughter of a priest. Nothing remains of this highly-praised
city, which prided itself in possessing, next to Thebes, the most learned
body of priests, but the walls, which now resemble great ramparts of
earth, and an obelisk still erect, and perhaps in its original site.
The peculiar interest of this obelisk is, that it was erected by King
SESURTESEN I. in the Old Monarchy, about B.C. 2300, and is by far the
most ancient of all known obelisks; for the broken one in the Fayoum
at Crocodilopolis, which bears the name of the same king, is rather a
lengthened _stele_, or tablet, in the form of an obelisk. Boghos Bey has
received a present of the ground on which the obelisk stands, and has
laid out a garden round it. The flowers of the garden have attracted a
multitude of bees, and they have been unable to find a more commodious
habitation than in the deep and sharply-cut hieroglyphics of the obelisk.
Within the space of a twelvemonth, they have covered the inscriptions of
the four sides to such a degree, that a great portion of them have now
become quite illegible. They had been, however, previously published,
and we had little difficulty in our examination, because three sides bear
the same inscription, and that on the fourth, also, differs but little.
Yesterday, the 15th October, was our king’s birthday, and I had selected
this day for the first visit to the Great Pyramids. We would there,
with a few friends, commemorate our King and our Fatherland in a joyous
festival. We invited the Austrian consul, Champion; the Prussian consul,
Bokty; our learned countryman, Dr. Pruner, and Messrs. Lieder, Isenberg,
Mühleisen, and Krapf to join our party, some of whom however, were to our
regret, prevented from attending.
The morning was beautiful beyond description, fresh and festive. We rode
in a long procession through the yet quiet city, and through the green
avenues and gardens which are now laid out before it. Wherever, almost,
that we met with new and well carried out works, Ibrahim Pascha was named
to us as their originator. He seems to be doing much in all parts of
Egypt for the embellishment and improvement of the country.
It is impossible to describe the scene that met our view when we emerged
from the avenues of date-trees and acacias; the sun rose on the left
behind the Moqattam hills, and illuminated the summits of the Pyramids
in front, which lay before us in the plain like gigantic rock crystals.
All were overpowered, and felt the solemn influence of the splendour and
grandeur of this morning scene. At Old Cairo we were transported across
the Nile to the village of Gizeh, from which the largest Pyramids are
called HARAM EL GIZEH. From this spot, in the dry season, one may ride
over to the Pyramids, by a straight road, in an hour, or little more. But
as the inundation now stands at its highest point, we were compelled to
make a great circuit on long dams; we came nearly as far up as Saqâra,
and only reached the foot of the greatest Pyramid at the end of five
hours and a half.
The unexpected length of the ride gave us an appetite for the simple
breakfast which, in order to strengthen us for the ascent of the
greatest Pyramid, we partook forthwith in one of the old sepulchral
chambers; these had been here hewn in the rock, somewhere about five
thousand years ago, and are now inhabited by some Bedouins. Meantime,
a spacious tent, with decorations of various colours, which I hired in
Cairo, had arrived. I had it pitched on the northern side of the Pyramid,
and the great Prussian royal standard, the black eagle with the golden
sceptre, the crown and the blue sword on a white ground, which our
artists had themselves, during the last few days, sketched, stitched, and
fastened to a high pole, was planted before the door of the tent.
About thirty Bedouins had, in the meanwhile, gathered around us, and
waited for the moment when we should ascend the Pyramids, in order to
raise us, with their strong brown arms, up the steps, which are between
three and four feet high. Scarcely had the signal for departure been
given, than immediately each of us was surrounded by several Bedouins,
who dragged us up the rough, steep path to the summit, as in a whirlwind.
A few minutes later, and our flag was unfurled on the summit of the
oldest and highest of human works that is known, and we greeted the
Prussian eagle with three joyous cheers to our king. Flying towards the
south, the eagle turned his crowned head towards our home in the north,
from which a refreshing wind blew, and diverted the hot rays of the
mid-day sun from off us. We also looked homewards, and each one thought
aloud, or silently in his heart, of those who loving, and beloved, he had
left behind.
The panoramic view of the landscape spread out at our feet next riveted
our attention. On the one side the Nile valley, a wide sea of overflowed
waters, intersected by long serpentine dams; here and there broken
by villages rising above its surface like islands, and by cultivated
promontories filling the whole plain of the valley that extended to the
opposite Moqattam hills, on whose most northerly point the citadel of
Cairo rises above the town stretched out at their base. On the other
side, the Libyan desert, a still more wonderful sea of sandy plains and
barren rocky hills, boundless, colourless, noiseless, enlivened by no
creature, no plants, no trace of the presence of man, not even by tombs;
and between both, the ruined _Necropolis_, whose general position and
simple outline lay spread out clearly and distinctly as on a map.
What a spectacle, and what recollections did it call forth! When Abraham
came to Egypt for the first time, he saw these very Pyramids, which had
been already built many centuries before his coming. In the plain before
us lay ancient Memphis, the residence of the kings on whose tombs we
were then standing; there dwelt Joseph, and ruled the land under one of
the most powerful and wisest Pharaohs of the newly restored Monarchy.
Farther away, to the left of the Moqattam hills, where the fruitful
low ground extends on the eastern arm of the Nile, beyond Heliopolis,
distinguished by its Obelisk, begins the blest region of Goshen, out of
which Moses led his people to the Syrian desert. It would not, indeed,
be difficult from our position to recognise that ancient fig-tree on the
road to Heliopolis, at Matarîeh, under whose shade, according to the
tradition of the country, Mary rested with the infant Christ. How many
thousand pilgrims of all nations have since visited these wonders of
the world down to ourselves, who, the youngest in time, are yet but the
predecessors of many other thousands who will succeed us, ascend these
Pyramids, and contemplate them with astonishment. I will not describe
any further the thoughts and feelings which agitated me during these
moments. There, at the goal of the wishes of many years, and at the
same time at the commencement of our expedition; there, at the summit
of the Cheops-Pyramid, to which the first link of our whole monumental
historical inquiry—not merely for the history of Egypt, but for that of
the world—is immoveably attached; there, where I looked down upon the
wonderful field of tombs, from which the Moses’-wand of science now calls
forth the shadows of the ancient dead, and causes them to pass before the
mirror of history, in the order of their time and rank, with their names
and titles, and with all their peculiarities, customs, and surrounding
accompaniments.
After I had taken an exact survey of the neighbouring tombs, with a view
to select some points for future excavations, we once more descended
to the entrance of the Pyramid, and, providing ourselves with lights,
entered, like miners, the steeply sloping shaft with some guides, and
reached the gallery, and so-called King’s Chamber, by paths already
familiar to me by drawings. We admired the infinitely fine seams of the
enormous blocks, and examined the quality of the stones of the passages
and chambers. In the spacious hall, whose floor, walls, and ceiling, are
entirely built of granite, and, therefore, return a metallic-sounding
echo, we sang our Prussian hymn, which sounded so powerful and so solemn
that our guides afterwards told the remaining Bedouins that we had
selected the innermost part of the Pyramid to perform divine service and
utter a loud general prayer. We now visited also the so-called Chamber
of the Queen, and then quitted the Pyramid, reserving the view of the
chambers which were more difficult of access for a future and longer
visit.
Meantime, our orientally-ornamented tent had been arranged, and a dinner
was prepared within it, seasoned by the importance of the festival, of
which only Prussians partook, with the exception of our two English
companions. It need hardly be told that our first toast on this occasion,
also, was to the king and his household, and it required no great
eloquence to inspire all hearts.
The remainder of the day passed in cheerful, festive, and tender
reminiscences and conversation, till the time for our departure had
arrived. We were still obliged to wait a quarter of an hour after sunset
to give our servants, our mule-drivers, and other Arabian attendants,
time to eat their frugal meal, as, on account of the Ramadan, in spite
of the heat and labours of the day, they had not yet tasted anything.
Then the clear, full moon guided us in the cool and silent night across
the sea of sand and waters, through villages and palm-groves back to the
city, which we did not reach before midnight.
LETTER IV.
_At the foot of the largest Pyramid, the 2nd Jan., 1843._
Still always here! in full activity since the 9th November, and perhaps
for several weeks longer in the new year. But yet, how could I suspect
from the accounts that have hitherto been given by travellers what a
harvest we had to gather on this spot; here, on the oldest scene of
all determinable chronological human history. It is strange how little
this spot has been examined, though it has been the most frequently
visited in Egypt. I will not, however, quarrel with our predecessors,
as we reap the fruits of their neglect. I have rather been compelled to
restrain our desire to see more of this land of wonders, as we shall
perhaps have to discharge half of our whole task on this spot. Two
tombs, besides the Pyramids, are conspicuously marked on the best of
the earlier maps. Rosellini has only accurately examined one tomb; and
Champollion says, in his letters: “Il y a peu à faire ici, et lorsqu’on
aura copié des scènes de la vie domestique, sculptées dans un tombeau,
je regagnerai nos embarcations.” We have given forty-five tombs on our
accurate topographical plan of the whole necropolis, whose occupants
have become known to me by their inscriptions, and altogether I have
recorded eighty-two, which seemed worthy of notice, by their inscriptions
or by other peculiarities.[7] Few of them belong to later times; almost
all of them were built during, or shortly after, the erection of the
great Pyramids, and therefore afford us an invaluable series of dates
for the knowledge of the oldest determinable civilisation of the human
race. The architecture of that period, about which I formerly could
only offer conjectures,[8] is now clearly developed before me. We have
thus early presented to us almost all the different component parts of
architecture; sculptures of entire figures, of all sizes, in alto-relievo
and basso-relievo, are presented in astonishing numbers. The style
is very marked, and beautifully executed, but it is evident that the
Egyptians of that time did not yet possess that canon of proportions
which we find prevailing at a later period.[9]