UP THE NILE.
1887.
When in the end of 1886 I went to Egypt, I had no excavations in
prospect, having bid good-bye to the Fund; but I had promised to take
photographs for the British Association, and I had much wished to see
Upper Egypt in a more thorough way than during a hurried dahabiyeh trip
to Thebes in 1882. To this end my friend Mr. Griffith joined me. We
hired a small boat with a cabin at Minia, and took six weeks wandering
up to Assuan, walking most of the way in and out of the line of cliffs.
Thus we saw much that is outside of the usual course, and spent
afterwards ten days at Assuan, and three weeks at Thebes, in tents. On
coming down the Nile I walked along the eastern shore from Wasta to
Memphis, but found it a fruitless region. Lastly, I lived several weeks
at Dahshur, for surveying the pyramids there.
Assuan proved a most interesting district, teeming with early
inscriptions cut on the rocks; and to copy all of these was a long
affair. Every day we went out with rope-ladder, bucket, and
squeeze-paper, as early as we could, and returned in the dusk; so at
last some two hundred inscriptions were secured, many of which were of
importance, and quite unnoticed before. These carvings are some of them
notices of royal affairs, but mostly funereal lists of offerings for the
benefit of various deceased persons. They abound most in the eleventh,
twelfth, and thirteenth dynasties, though some of them are later; and
one records queen Amenardus, and another Psamtik II, of the twenty-sixth
dynasty. Their main interest is in the great number of personal names
which they preserve, and the relationships stated. We see that the
father is often not named at all, and the father’s family is scarcely
ever noticed; while on the mother’s side the relations extend even to
second cousins. To decipher these records is sometimes a hard matter,
when they are very rudely chipped--or rather bruised--on the rough
granite rocks; and continually we used to consult and dispute about some
sign for long enough to copy all the rest of the inscription. Some of
them are, however, beautifully engraved, and quite monumental in style.
The most striking, perhaps, is a rock on the island of Elephantine,
which had never been noticed before, although in the pathway. It was a
sort of royal album begun by Ra-kha-nefer (fifth dynasty); followed by
Unas (fifth), who carved a handsome tablet. Then Ra-meri Pepi (sixth)
appropriated Ra-kha-nefer’s inscription; Ra-nefer-ka Pepi next carved a
tablet; in later times, of the eleventh dynasty, Antef-aa II followed
with another tablet; and lastly Amenemhat I (twelfth dynasty) placed the
sixth inscription here.
[Illustration: 54. TABLETS OF KINGS, FIFTH TO TWELFTH DYNASTIES. 1: 40.]
Not only were there these granite inscriptions to be copied, but also a
great number of _graffiti_ and travellers’ names on the sandstone rocks,
principally at Gebel Silsileh. Among these was a Phoenician inscription,
one of the very few known in Egypt; and some curious quarry records of
Roman age. The main inscription of this region is, however, one very
seldom seen, even by antiquaries as it is in a valley
[Illustration: 55. AN INSCRIBED ROCK AT SILSILEH.]
[Illustration: 56. TABLET OF ANTEF AND MENTUHOTEP III.]
where no one stops. It portrays Antef V and his vizier Khati worshipping
Mentuhotep IV and his wife. Near it is another, smaller, tablet with the
worship of the same king; and up the valley we discovered a tablet with
the worship of Sankh-ka-ra, all of the eleventh dynasty. All over this
district are many rude figures of animals, marked on the rocks by
hammering: they are of various ages, some perhaps modern, but the
earlier ones certainly before the eighteenth dynasty; and, to judge by
the weathering of the rock, it seems probable that they were begun here
long before any of the monuments of Egypt that we know. The usual
figures are of men, horses, and boats, but there are also camels,
ostriches and elephants to be seen.
[Illustration: 57. ANIMAL FIGURES AT SILSILEH.]
On the desert hills behind Esneh I found what is--so far--the oldest
thing known from Egypt. In prehistoric days the Nile used to fill the
whole breadth of the valley, to a depth of a couple of hundred feet, fed
with the heavy rainfall that carved back the valleys all along the river
by great waterfalls, the precipices of which now stand stark and arid in
the bleaching sun. Many parts of the valley are above the present river,
and are now desert, so that at Esneh the hills are several miles from
the Nile, and on a spur of one--where probably no man sets foot for
[Illustration: 58. OLDEST TOOL IN EGYPT. 1:2.]
[Illustration: 59. PEOPLE OF PUN, S. ARABIA.]
centuries at a time--I found lying a palaeolithic wrought flint. It was
about a couple of hundred feet above the Nile, and being clearly a
river-worn object, it had been left there in the old time of the Great
Nile. The flints found by General Pitt-Rivers at Thebes belong to a
later age, when the Nile had fallen to almost its present level. But
those are far older than any monuments known to us. We see then two
stages before the beginning of what we can call history.
[Illustration: 60. HANEBU, EARLY GREEK.]
At Thebes my main work was in obtaining casts and photographs of all the
types of foreign races on the monuments. For making ethnographical
comparisons we were, until then, dependent on drawings, which were often
incorrect. Now we have nearly two hundred photographs, all with the
same size of head, giving several examples of each race that was
represented by the Egyptians.
[Illustration: 61. ENTRANCE OF SOUTH PYRAMID. CASING DESTROYED BELOW
IT.]
In most cases it would have been difficult to photograph the sculptures
directly, owing to the difficulties of placing the camera, and the exact
time of the day required for the oblique sunlight. Paper squeezes were
therefore taken in preference, and a box of these, weighing a few
pounds, served as moulds for producing in England a set of plaster casts
which weighed a hundred times as much. By waxing the paper several
successive casts can be made from one mould, and from a set of the casts
I took photographs, which can be printed interminably, and which are
far more clear and distinct than if they were made directly from the
stained and darkened sculptures. The paintings were of course
photographed directly; where near the outer air enough light was
obtained by reflectors of tinned plate; but in distant interiors, such
as the tombs of the kings, an explosion of the proper amount of
magnesium powder, mixed with chlorate of potash, gave excellent results
for light.
[Illustration: 62. NORTH PYRAMID, AND SOUTHERN IN DISTANCE.]
Having finished the Theban work, I then went to Dahshur, and there made
a survey around the two large pyramids; but unfortunately I could not
obtain the permission to uncover the bases of the pyramids in time to
measure more than the southern one. This pyramid is interesting, as it
retains the original casing over most of it, and gives us some idea of
what the other pyramids looked like before the plundering by Arabs, and
perhaps older thieves. The outside is peculiar, as being of a steeper
angle below than above, and hence it is often called the ‘blunted
pyramid.’ The results of the survey were that it was all designed in
even numbers of cubits. The base was 360 cubits, the height 200, divided
into 90 cubits steep, and 110 cubits of flatter slope. The space walled
in around it was 100 cubits wide. Another small pyramid on the south of
it was 100 cubits square.
While at Dahshur I also found an interesting point about the ancient
roads. The road from Sakkara to the oasis of Ammon was marked out by
banks of gravel swept up on either side, leaving a clear space 50 cubits
wide. The other road from Sakkara to the Fayum was marked out by
milestones all along, there being a larger tablet at each _schoenus_, or
4 miles, while at each 1000 cubits, or third of a mile, was a lesser
pillar on a stone socket.
[Illustration: 63. WAY-MARKS ON FAYUM ROAD.]
[Illustration: 64. PYRAMID OF HAWARA.]