The mountains here come down till within two miles of Suf el Woodan,

for so the village is called. We were told there were some ruins to the

westward of this, but only rubbish, neither arch nor column standing. I

suppose it is the Aphroditopolis, or the city of Venus, which we are to

look for here, and the nome of that name, all to the eastward of it.

The wind still freshening, we passed by several villages on each side,

all surrounded with palm-trees, verdant and pleasant, but conveying

an idea of sameness and want of variety, such as every traveller must

have felt who has sailed in the placid, muddy, green-banked rivers in

Holland.

The Nile, however, is here fully a mile broad, the water deep, and the

current strong. The wind seemed to be exasperated by the resistance of

the stream, and blew fresh and steadily, as indeed it generally does

where the current is violent.

We passed Nizelet Embarak, which means the Blessed Landing-place.

Mr Norden[103] calls it Giesiret Barrakaed, which he says is the

_watering-place of the cross_. Was this even the proper name here

given it, it should be translated the Blessed Island; but, without

understanding the language, it is in vain to keep a register of names.

The boatmen, living either in the Delta, Cairo, or one of the great

towns in Upper Egypt, and coming constantly loaded with merchandise, or

strangers from these great places, make swift passages by the villages,

either down the river with a rapid current, or up with a strong, fair,

and steady wind: And, when the season of the Nile’s inundation is over,

and the wind turns southward, they repair all to the Delta, the river

being no longer navigable above, and there they are employed till the

next season.

They know little, therefore, and care less about the names or

inhabitants of these villages, who have each of them barks of their

own to carry on their own trade. There are some indeed employed by

the Coptic and Turkish merchants, who are better versed in the names

of villages than others; but, if they are not, and find you do not

understand the language, they will never confess ignorance; they

will tell you the first name that comes uppermost, sometimes very

ridiculous, often very indecent, which we see afterwards pass into

books, and wonder that such names were ever given to towns.

The reader will observe this in comparing Mr Norden’s voyage and mine,

where he will seldom see the same village pass by the same name. My

Rais, Abou Cuffi, when he did not know a village, sometimes tried this

with me. But when he saw me going to write, he used then to tell me

the truth, that he did not know the village; but that such was the

custom of him, and his brethren, to people that did not understand the

language, especially if they were priests, meaning Catholic Monks.

We passed with great velocity Nizelet Embarak, Cubabac, Nizelet Omar,

Racca Kibeer, then Racca Seguier, and came in sight of Atsia, a large

village at some distance from the Nile; all the valley here is green,

the palm-groves beautiful, and the Nile deep.

Still it is not the prospect that pleases, for the whole ground that

is sown to the sandy ascent of the mountains, is but a narrow stripe

of three quarters of a mile broad, and the mountains themselves, which

here begin to have a moderate degree of elevation, and which bound this

narrow valley, are white, gritty, sandy, and uneven, and perfectly

destitute of all manner of verdure.

At the small village of Racca Seguier there was this remarkable,

that it was thick, surrounded with trees of a different nature and

figure from palms; what they were I know not, I believe they were

pomegranate-trees; I thought, that with my glass I discerned some

reddish fruit upon them; and we had passed a village called Rhoda, a

name they give in Egypt to pomegranates; Salcah is on the opposite, or

east-side of the river. The Nile divides above the village; it fell

very calm, and here we passed the night of the fifteenth.

Our Rais Abou Cuffi begged leave to go to Comadreedy, a small village

on the west of the Nile, with a few palm-trees about it; he said that

his wife was there. As I never heard any thing of this till now, I

fancied he was going to divert himself in the manner he had done the

night before he left Cairo; for he had put on his black surtout, or

great coat, his scarlet turban, and a new scarlet shaul, both of which

he said he had brought, to do me honour in my voyage.

I thanked him much for his consideration, but asked him why, as he

was a Sherriffe, he did not wear the _green turban_ of Mahomet? He

answered, Poh! that was a trick put upon strangers; there were many

men who wore green turbans, he said, that were very great rascals; but

he was a _Saint_, which was better than a Sherriffe, and was known

as such all over the world, whatever colour of a turban he wore, or

whether a turban at all, and he only dressed for my honour; would be

back early in the morning, and bring me a fair wind.

“Hassan, said I, I fancy it is much more likely that you bring me some

aquavitæ, if you do not drink it all.” He promised that he would see

and procure some, for mine was now at an end. He said, the Prophet

never forbade aquavitæ, only the drinking of wine; and the prohibition

could not be intended for Egypt, for there was no wine in it. But

Bouza, says he, Bouza I will drink, as long as I can walk from stem to

stern of a vessel, and away he went. I had indeed no doubt he would

keep his resolution of drinking whether he returned or not.

We kept, as usual, a very good watch all night, which passed without

disturbance. Next day, the 17th, was exceedingly hazy in the morning,

though it cleared about ten o’clock. It was, however, sufficient to

shew the falsity of the observation of the author, who says that the

Nile[104] emits no fogs, and in course of the voyage we often saw other

examples, of the fallacy of this assertion.

In the afternoon, the people went ashore to shoot pigeons; they were

very bad, and black, as it was not the season of grain. I remained

arranging my journal, when, with some surprize, I saw the Howadat Arab

come in, and sit down close to me; however, I was not afraid of any

evil intention, having a crooked knife at my girdle, and two pistols

lying by me.

What’s this? How now, friend? said I; Who sent for you? He would have

kissed my hand, saying _Fiarduc_, I am under your protection: he then

pulled out a rag from within his girdle, and said he was going to

Mecca, and had taken that with him; that he was afraid my boatmen would

rob him, and throw him into the Nile, or get somebody to rob and murder

him by the way; and that one of the Moors, Hassan’s servant, had been

feeling for his money the night before, when he thought him asleep.

I made him count his sum, which amounted to 7½ sequins, and a piece of

silver, value about half-a-crown, which in Syria they call Abou Kelb,

Father Dog. It is the Dutch Lion rampant, which the Arabs, who never

call a thing by its right name, term _a dog_.--In short, this treasure

amounted to something more than three guineas; and this he desired me

to keep till we separated. Do not you tell them, said he, and I will

throw off my cloaths and girdle, and leave them on board, while I go to

swim, and when they find I have nothing upon me they will not hurt me.

But what security, said I, have you that I do not rob you of this, and

get you thrown into the Nile some night? No, no, says he, that I know

is impossible. I have never been able to sleep till I spoke to you;

do with me what you please, and my money too, only keep me out of the

hands of those murderers. “Well, well, said I, now you have got rid

of your money, you are safe, and you shall be my servant; lye before

the door of my dining-room all night, they dare not hurt a hair of your

head while I am alive.”

The Pyramids, which had been on our right hand at different distances

since we passed the Saccara, terminated here in one of a very singular

construction. About two miles from the Nile, between Suf and Woodan,

there is a Pyramid, which at first sight appears all of a piece; it

is of unbaked bricks, and perfectly entire; the inhabitants call

it the [105]False Pyramid. The lower part is a hill exactly shaped

like a Pyramid for a considerable height. Upon this is continued

the superstructure in proportion till it terminates like a Pyramid

above; and, at a distance, it would require a good eye to discern the

difference, for the face of the stone has a great resemblance to clay,

of which the Pyramids of the Saccara are composed.

Hassan Abou Cuffi was as good as his word in one respect; he came in

the night, and had not drunk much fermented liquors; but he could find

no spirits, he said, and that, to be sure, was one of the reasons of

his return; I had sat up a great part of the night waiting a season for

observation, but it was very cloudy, as all the nights had been since

we left Cairo.

The 18th, about eight o’clock in the morning, we prepared to get on our

way; the wind was calm, and south. I asked our Rais where his fair

wind was which he promised to bring? He said, his wife had quarrelled

with him all night, and would not give him time to pray; and therefore,

says he with a very droll face, you shall see me do all that a Saint

can do for you on this occasion. I asked him what that was? He made

another droll face, “Why, it is to draw the boat by the rope till the

wind _turns fair_.” I commended very much this wise alternative, and

immediately the vessel began to move, but very slowly, the wind being

still unfavourable.

On looking into Mr Norden’s voyage, I was struck at first sight with

this paragraph[106]: “We saw this day abundance of camels, but they did

not come near enough for us to shoot them.”--I thought with myself, to

_shoot_ camels in Egypt would be very little better than to _shoot_

men, and that it was very lucky for him the camels did not come near,

if that was the only thing that prevented him. Upon looking at the

note, I see it is a small mistake of the translator[107], who says,

“that in the original it is Chameaux d’eau, _water-camels_; but whether

they are a particular species of camels, or a different kind of animal,

he does not know.”

But this is no species of camel, it is a bird called a Pelican, and

the proper name in Arabic, is Jimmel el Bahar, the Camel of the River.

The other bird like a partridge, which Mr Norden’s people shot, and

did not know its name, and which was better than a pigeon, is called

Gooto, very common in all the desert parts of Africa. I have drawn

them of many different colours. That of the Deserts of Tripoli, and

Cyrenaicum, is very beautiful; that of Egypt is spotted white like the

Guinea-fowl, but upon a brown ground, not a blue one, as that latter

bird is. However, they are all very bad to eat, but they are not of the

same kind with the partridge. Its legs and feet are all covered with

feathers, and it has but two toes before. The Arabs imagine it feeds on

stones, but its food is insects.

After Comadreedy, the Nile is again divided by another fragment of

the island, and inclines a little to the westward. On the east is the

village Sidi Ali el Courani. It has only two palm-trees belonging to

it, and on that account hath a deserted appearance; but the wheat upon

the banks was five inches high, and more advanced than any we had seen.

The mountains on the east-side come down to the banks of the Nile, are

bare, white, and sandy, and there is on this side no appearance of

villages.

The river here is about a quarter of a mile broad, or something more.

It should seem it was the Angyrorum Civitas of Ptolemy, but neither

night nor day could I get an instant for observation, on account of

thin white clouds, which confused (for they scarce can be said to

cover) the heavens continually.

We passed now a convent of cophts, with a small plantation of palms. It

is a miserable building, with a dome like to a saint’s or marabout’s,

and stands quite alone.

About four miles from this is the village of Nizelet el Arab,

consisting of miserable huts. Here begin large plantations of sugar

canes, the first we had yet seen; they were then loading boats with

these to carry them to Cairo. I procured from them as many as I

desired. The canes are about an inch and a quarter in diameter, they

are cut in round pieces about three inches long, and, after having been

slit, they are steeped in a wooden bowl of water. They give a very

agreeable taste and flavour to it, and make it the most refreshing

drink in the world, whilst by imbibing the water, the canes become more

juicy, and lose a part of their heavy clammy sweetness, which would

occasion thirst. I was surprized at finding this plant in such a state

of perfection so far to the northward. We were now scarcely arrived

in lat. 29°, and nothing could be more beautiful and perfect than the

canes were.

I apprehend they were originally a plant of the old continent, and

transported to the new, upon its first discovery, because here in Egypt

they grow from seed. I do not know if they do so in Brazil, but they

have been in all times the produce of Egypt. Whether they have been

found elsewhere I have not had an opportunity of being informed, but

it is time that some skilful person, versed in the history of plants,

should separate some of the capital productions of the old, and new

continent, from the adventitious, before, from length of time, that

which we now know of their history be lost.

Sugar, tobacco, red podded or Cayenne pepper, cotton, some species

of Solanum, Indigo, and a multitude of others, have not as yet their

origin well ascertained.

Prince Henry of Portugal put his discoveries to immediate profit, and

communicated what he found new in each part in Europe, Asia, Africa,

and America, to where it was wanting. It will be soon difficult to

ascertain to each quarter of the world the articles that belong to it,

and fix upon those few that are common to all.

Even wheat, the early produce of Egypt, is not a native of it. It

grows under the Line, within the Tropics, and as far north and south

as we know. Severe northern winters seem to be necessary to it, and it

vegetates vigorously in frost and snow. But whence it came, and in what

shape, is yet left to conjecture.

Though the stripe of green wheat was continued all along the Nile,

it was interrupted for about half a mile on each side of the coptish

convent. These poor wretches know, that though they may sow, yet, from

the violence of the Arabs, they shall never reap, and therefore leave

the ground desolate.

On the side opposite to Sment, the stripe begins again, and continues

from Sment to Mey-Moom, about two miles, and from Mey-Moom to Shenuiah,

one mile further. In this small stripe, not above a quarter of a mile

broad, besides wheat, clover is sown, which they call Bersine. I

don’t think it equals what I have seen in England, but it is sown and

cultivated in the same manner.

Immediately behind this narrow stripe, the white mountains appear

again, square and flat on the top like tables. They seem to be laid

upon the surface of the earth, not inserted into it, for the several

strata that are divided lye as level as it is possible to place them

with a rule; they are of no considerable height.

We next passed Boush, a village on the west-side of the Nile, two miles

south of Shenuiah; and, a little further, Beni Ali, where we see for

a minute the mountains on the right or west-side of the Nile, running

in a line nearly south, and very high. About five miles from Boush is

the village of Maniareish on the east-side of the river, and here the

mountains on that side end.

Boush is about two miles and a quarter from the river. Beni Ali is a

large village, and its neighbour, Zeytoom, still larger, both on the

western shore. I suppose this last was part of the Heracleotic nome,

where [108]Strabo says the olive-tree grew, and no where else in Egypt,

but we saw no appearance of the great works once said to have been in

that nome. A little farther south is Baida, where was an engagement

between Hussein Bey, and Ali Bey then in exile, in which the former was

defeated, and the latter restored to the government of Cairo.

From Maniareish to Beni Suef is two miles and a half, and opposite to

this the mountains appear again of considerable height, about twelve

miles distant. Although Beni Suef is no better built than any other

town or village that we had passed, yet it interests by its extent; it

is the most considerable place we had yet seen since our leaving Cairo.

It has a cacheff and a mosque, with three large steeples, and is a

market-town.

The country all around is well cultivated, and seems to be of the

utmost fertility; the inhabitants are better cloathed, and seemingly

less miserable, and oppressed, than those we had left behind in the

places nearer Cairo.

The Nile is very shallow at Beni Suef, and the current strong. We

touched several times in the middle of the stream, and came to an

anchor at Baha, about a quarter of a mile above Beni Suef, where we

passed the night.

We were told to keep good watch here all night, that there were troops

of robbers on the east-side of the water who had lately plundered some

boats, and that the cacheff either dared not, or would not give them

any assistance. We did indeed keep strict watch, but saw no robbers,

and were no other way molested.

The 18th we had fine weather and a fair wind. Still I thought the

villages were beggarly, and the constant groves of palm-trees so

perfectly verdant, did not compensate for the penury of sown land, the

narrowness of the valley, and barrenness of the mountains.

We passed Mansura, Gadami, Magaga, Malatiah, and other small villages,

some of them not consisting of fifteen houses. Then follow Gundiah and

Kerm on the west-side of the river, with a large plantation of dates,

and four miles further Sharuni. All the way from Boush there appeared

no mountains on the west side, but large plantations of dates, which

extended from Gundiah four miles.

From this to Abou Azeeze, frequent plantations of sugar canes were now

cutting. All about Kafoor is sandy and barren on both sides of the

river. Etfa is on the west side of the Nile, which here again makes an

island. All the houses have now receptacles for pigeons on their tops,

from which is derived a considerable profit. They are made of earthen

pots one above the other, occupying the upper story, and giving the

walls of the turrets a lighter and more ornamented appearance.

We arrived in the evening at Zohora, about a mile south of Etfa. It

consists of three plantations of dates, and is five miles, from Miniet,

and there we passed the night of the 18th of December.

There was nothing remarkable till we came to Barkaras, a village on the

side of a hill, planted with thick groves of palm-trees.

The wind was so high we scarcely could carry our sails; the current was

strong at Shekh Temine, and the violence with which we went through the

water was terrible. My Rais told me we should have slackened our sails,

if it had not been, that, seeing me curious about the construction of

the vessel and her parts, and as we were in no danger of striking,

though the water was low, he wanted to shew me what she could do.

I thanked him for his kindness. We had all along preserved strict

friendship. Never fear the banks, said I; for I know if there is one

in the way, you have nothing to do but to bid him begone, and he will

hurry to one side directly. “I have had passengers, says he, who would

believe that, and more than that, when I told them; but there is no

occasion I see to waste much time with you in speaking of miracles.”

“You are mistaken, Rais, I replied, very much mistaken; I love to

hear modern miracles vastly, there is always some amusement in

them.”--“Aboard your Christian ships, says he, you always have a prayer

at twelve o’clock, and drink a glass of brandy; since you won’t be a

Turk like me, I wish at least you would be a Christian.”--Very fairly

put, said I, Hassan, let your vessel keep her wind if there is no

danger, and I shall take care to lay in a stock for the whole voyage at

the first town in which we can purchase it.

We passed by a number of villages on the western shore, the eastern

seeming to be perfectly unpeopled: First, Feshné, a considerable place;

then [109]Miniet, or the ancient Phylæ, a large town which had been

fortified towards the water, at least there were some guns there. A

rebel Bey had taken possession of it, and it was usual to stop here,

the river being both narrow and rapid; but the Rais was in great

spirits, and resolved to hold his wind, as I had desired him, and

nobody made us any signal from shore.

We came to a village called Rhoda, whence we saw the magnificent ruins

of the ancient city of Antinous, built by Adrian. Unluckily I knew

nothing of these ruins when I left Cairo, and had taken no pains to

provide myself with letters of recommendation as I could easily have

done. Perhaps I might have found it difficult to avail myself of them,

and it was, upon the whole, better as it was.

I asked the Rais what sort of people they were? He said that the

town was composed of very bad Turks, very bad Moors, and very bad

Christians; that several devils had been seen among them lately,

who had been discovered by being better and quieter than any of the

rest.--The Nubian geographer informs us, that it was from this town

Pharaoh brought his magicians, to compare their powers with those of

Moses; an anecdote worthy that great historian.

I told the Rais, that I must, of necessity, go ashore, and asked him,

if the people of this place had no regard for saints? that I imagined,

if he would put on his red turban as he did at Comadreedy for my

honour, it would then appear that he was a saint, as he before said he

was known to be all the world over. He did not seem to be fond of the

expedition; but hauling in his main-sail, and with his fore-sail full,

stood S. S. E. directly under the Ruins. In a short time we arrived at

the landing-place; the banks are low, and we brought up in a kind of

bight or small bay, where there was a stake, so our vessel touched very

little, or rather swung clear.

Abou Cuffi’s son Mahomet, and the Arab, went on shore, under pretence

of buying some provision, and to see how the land lay, but after the

character we had of the inhabitants, all our fire-arms were brought

to the door of the cabin. In the mean time, partly with my naked eye

and partly with my glass, I observed the ruins so attentively as to be

perfectly in love with them.

These columns of the angle of the portico were standing fronting to

the north, part of the tympanum, cornice, frize, and architrave, all

entire, and very much ornamented; thick trees hid what was behind.

The columns were of the largest size and fluted; the capitals

Corinthian, and in all appearance entire. They were of white Parian

marble probably, but had lost the extreme whiteness, or polish, of

the Antinous at Rome, and were changed to the colour of the fighting

gladiator, or rather to a brighter yellow. I saw indistinctly, also, a

triumphal arch, or gate of the town, in the very same style; and some

blocks of very white shining stone, which seemed to be alabaster, but

for what employed I do not know.

No person had yet stirred, when all on a sudden we heard the noise of

Mahomet and the Moor in strong dispute. Upon this the Rais stripping

off his coat, leaped ashore, and flipped off the rope from the stake,

and another of the Moors stuck a strong perch or pole into the river,

and twisted the rope round it. We were in a bight, or calm place, so

that the stream did not move the boat.

Mahomet and the Moor came presently in sight; the people had taken

Mahomet’s turban from him, and they were apparently on the very worst

terms. Mahomet cried to us, that the whole town was coming, and getting

near the boat, he and the Moor jumped in with great agility. A number

of people was assembled, and three shots were fired at us, very

quickly, the one after the other.

I cried out in Arabic, “Infidels, thieves, and robbers! come on, or

we shall presently attack you:” upon which I immediately fired a

ship-blunderbuss with pistol small bullets, but with little elevation,

among the bushes, so as not to touch them. The three or four men that

were nearest fell flat upon their faces, and slid away among the bushes

on their bellies, like eels, and we saw no more of them.

We now put our vessel into the stream, filled our fore-sail, and stood

off, Mahomet crying, Be upon your guard, if you are men, we are the

Sanjack’s soldiers, and will come for the turban to-night. More we

neither heard nor saw.

We were no sooner out of their reach, than our Rais, filling his pipe,

and looking very grave, told me to thank God that I was in the vessel

with such a man as he was, as it was owing to that only I escaped from

being murdered a-shore. “Certainly, said I, Hassan, under God, the way

of escaping from being murdered on land, is never to go out of the

boat, but don’t you think that my blunderbuss was as effectual a mean

as your holiness? Tell me, Mahomet, What did they do to you?” He said,

They had not seen us come in, but had heard of us ever since we were at

Metrahenny, and had waited to rob or murder us; that upon now hearing

we were come, they had all ran to their houses for their arms, and were

coming down, immediately, to plunder the boat; upon which he and the

Moor ran off, and being met by these three people, and the boy, on the

road, who had nothing in their hands, one of them snatched the turban

off. He likewise added, that there were two parties in the town; one

in favour of Ali Bey, the other friends to a rebel Bey who had taken

Miniet; that they had fought, two or three days ago, among themselves,

and were going to fight again, each of them having called Arabs to

their assistance. “Mahomet Bey, says my Howadat Arab, will come one of

these days with the soldiers, and bring our Shekh and people with him,

who will burn their houses, and destroy their corn, that they will be

all starved to death next year.”

Hassan and his son Mahomet were violently exasperated, and nothing

would serve them but to go in again near the shore, and fire all the

guns and blunderbusses among the people. But, besides that I had no

inclination of that kind, I was very loth to frustrate the attempts

of some future traveller, who may add this to the great remains of

architecture we have preserved already.

It would be a fine outset for some engraver; the elegance and

importance of the work are certain. From Cairo the distance is but

four days pleasant and safe navigation, and in quiet times, protection

might, by proper means, be easily enough obtained at little expence.

CHAP. V.

_Voyage to Upper Egypt continued--Ashmounein, Ruins there--Gawa

Kibeer Ruins--Mr Norden mistaken--Achmim--Convent of

Catholics--Dendera--Magnificent Ruins--Adventure with a Saint

there._

The Rais’s curiosity made him attempt to prevail with me to land

at Reremont, three miles and a half off, just a-head of us; this I

understood was a Coptic Christian town, and many of Shekh Abadé’s

people were Christians also. I thought them too near to have any thing

to do with either of them. At Reremont there are a great number of

Persian wheels, to draw the water for the sugar canes, which belong to

Christians. The water thus brought up from the river runs down to the

plantations, below or behind the town, after being emptied on the banks

above; a proof that here the descent from the mountains is not an optic

fallacy, as Dr Shaw says.

We passed Ashmounein, probably the ancient Latopolis, a large town,

which gives the name to the province, where there are magnificent ruins

of Egyptian architecture; and after that we came to Melawé, larger,

better built, and better inhabited than Ashmounein, the residence of

the Cacheff. Mahomet Aga was there at that time with troops from Cairo,

he had taken Miniet, and, by the friendship of Shekh Hamam, the great

Arab, governor of Upper Egypt, he kept all the people on that side of

the river in their allegiance to Ali Bey.

I had seen him at Cairo, and Risk had spoken to him to do me service

if he met with me, which he promised. I called at Melawé to complain

of our treatment at Shekh Abadé, and see if I could engage him, as he

had nothing else to employ him, to pay a visit to my friends at that

inhospitable place. This I was told he would do upon the slightest

intimation. He, unfortunately, however, happened to be out upon some

party; but I was lucky in getting an old Greek, a servant of his, who

knew I was a friend, both to the Bey and to his Patriarch.

He brought me about a gallon of brandy, and a jar of lemons and

oranges, preserved in honey; both very agreeable. He brought likewise

a lamb, and some garden-stuffs. Among the sweetmeats was some

horse-raddish preserved like ginger, which certainly, though it might

be wholesome, was the very worst stuff ever I tasted. I gave a good

square piece of it, well wrapt in honey, to the Rais, who coughed and

spit half an hour after, crying he was poisoned.

I saw he did not wish me to stay at Melawé, as he was afraid of the

Bey’s troops, that they might engage him in their service to carry them

down, so went away with great good will, happy in the acquisition of

the brandy, declaring he would carry sail as long as the wind held.

We passed Mollé, a small village with a great number of acacia trees

intermixed with the plantations of palms. These occasion a pleasing

variety, not only from the difference of the shape of the tree, but

also from the colour and diversity of the green.

As the sycamore in Lower Egypt, so this tree seems to be the only

indigenous one in the Thebaid. It is the Acacia Vera, or the Spina

Egyptiaca, with a round yellow flower. The male is called the Saiel;

from it proceeds the gum arabic, upon incision with an ax. This gum

chiefly comes from Arabia Petrea, where these trees are most numerous.

But it is the tree of all deserts, from the northmost part of Arabia,

to the extremity of Ethiopia, and its leaves the only food for camels

travelling in those desert parts. This gum is called Sumach in the west

of Africa, and is a principal article of trade on the Senega among the

Ialofes.

A large plantation of Dates reaches all along the west side, and ends

in a village called Masara. Here the river, though broad, happened to

be very shallow; and by the violence with which we went, we stuck upon

a sand bank so fast, that it was after sun-set before we could get

off; we came to an anchor opposite to Masara the night of the 19th of

December.

On the 20th, early in the morning, we again set sail and passed two

villages, the first called Welled Behi, the next Salem, about a mile

and a half distant from each other on the west side of the Nile. The

mountains on the west side of the valley are about sixteen miles off,

in a high even ridge, running in a direction south-east; while the

mountains on the east run in a parallel direction with the river, and

are not three miles distant.

We passed Deirout on the east side, and another called Zohor, in the

same quarter, surrounded with palms; then Siradé on the east side also,

where is a wood of the Acacia, which seems very luxuriant; and, though

it was now December, and the mornings especially very cold, the trees

were in full flower. We passed Monfalout, a large town on the western

shore. It was once an old Egyptian town, and place of great trade; it

was ruined by the Romans, but re-established by the Arabs.

An Arabian [110]author says, that, digging under the foundation of an

old Egyptian temple here, they found a crocodile made of lead, with

hieroglyphics upon it, which they imagine to be a talisman, to prevent

crocodiles from passing further. Indeed, as yet, we had not seen any;

that animal delights in heat, and, as the mornings were very cold, he

keeps himself to the southward. The valley of Egypt here is about eight

miles from mountain to mountain.

We passed Siout, another large town built with the remains of the

ancient city [111]Isiu. It is some miles inland, upon the side of a

large calish, over which there is an ancient bridge. This was formerly

the station of the caravan for Sennaar. They assembled at Monfalout and

Siout, under the protection of a Bey residing there. They then passed

nearly south-west, into the sandy desert of Libya, to El Wah, the

Oasis Magna of antiquity, and so into the great Desert of Selima.

Three miles beyond Siout, the wind turned directly south, so we were

obliged to stay at Tima the rest of the 20th. I was wearied with

continuing in the boat, and went on shore at Tima. It is a small

town, surrounded like the rest with groves of palm-trees. Below Tima

is Bandini, three miles on the east side. The Nile is here full of

sandy islands. Those that the inundation has first left are all sown,

these are chiefly on the east. The others on the west were barren and

uncultivated; all of them mostly composed of sand.

I walked into the desert behind the village, and shot a considerable

number of the bird called Gooto, and several hares likewise, so that

I sent one of my servants loaded to the boat. I then walked down past

a small village called Nizelet el Himma, and returned by a still

smaller one called Shuka, about a quarter of a mile from Tima. I was

exceedingly fatigued with the heat by the south wind[112] blowing, and

the deep sand on the side of the mountain. I was then beginning my

apprenticeship, which I fully compleated.

The people in these villages were in appearance little less miserable

than those of the villages we had passed. They seemed shy and surly

at first, but, upon conversation, became placid enough. I bought some

medals from them of no value, and my servants telling them I was a

physician, I gave my advice to several of the sick. This reconciled

them perfectly, they brought me fresh water and some sugar-canes, which

they split and steeped in it. If they were satisfied, I was very much

so. They told me of a large scene of ruins that was about four miles

distant, and offered to send a person to conduct me, but I did not

accept their offer, as I was to pass there next day.

The 21st, in the morning, we came to Gawa, where is the second scene

of ruins of Egyptian architecture, after leaving Cairo. I immediately

went on shore, and found a small temple of three columns in front,

with the capitals entire, and the columns in several separate pieces.

They seemed by that, and their slight proportions, to be of the most

modern of that species of building; but the whole were covered with

hieroglyphics, the old story over again, the hawk and the serpent, the

man sitting with the dog’s head, with the perch, or measuring-rod;

in one hand, the hemisphere and globes with wings, and leaves of the

banana-tree, as is supposed, in his other. The temple is filled with

rubbish and dung of cattle, which the Arabs bring in here to shelter

them from the heat.

Mr Norden says, that these are the remains of the ancient Diospolis

Parva, but, though very loth to differ from him, and without the least

desire of criticising, I cannot here be of his opinion. For Ptolemy,

I think, makes Diospolis Parva about lat. 26° 40´, and Gawa is 27°

20´, which is by much too great a difference. Besides, Diospolis and

its nome were far to the southward of Panopolis; but we shall shew, by

undoubted evidence, that Gawa is to the northward.

There are two villages of this name opposite to each other; the one

Gawa Shergieh, which means the Eastern Gawa, and this is by much

the largest; the other Gawa Garbieh. Several authors, not knowing

the meaning of these terms, call it Gawa Gebery; a word that has no

signification whatever, but Garbieh means the Western.

I was very well pleased to see here, for the first time, two shepherd

dogs lapping up the water from the stream, then lying down in it with

great seeming leisure and satisfaction. It refuted the old fable, that

the dogs living on the banks of the Nile run as they drink, for fear of

the crocodile.

All around the villages of Gawa Garbieh, and the plantations belonging

to them, Meshta and Raany, with theirs also joining them (that is, all

the west side of the river) are cultivated and sown from the very foot

of the mountains to the water’s edge, the grain being thrown upon the

mud as soon as ever the water has left it. The wheat was at this time

about four inches in length.

We passed three villages, Shaftour, Commawhaia, and Zinedi; we anchored

off Shaftour, and within sight of Taahta. Taahta is a large village,

and in it are several mosques. On the east is a mountain called Jibbel

Heredy, from a Turkish saint, who was turned into a snake, has lived

several hundred years, and is to live for ever. As Christians, Moors,

and Turks, all faithfully believe in this, the consequence is, that

abundance of nonsense is daily writ and told concerning it. Mr Norden

discusses it at large, and afterwards gravely tells us, he does not

believe it; in which I certainly must heartily join him, and recommend

to my readers to do the same, without reading any thing about it.

On the 22d, at night, we arrived at Achmim. I landed my quadrant and

instruments, with a view of observing an eclipse of the moon; but,

immediately after her rising, clouds and mist so effectually covered

the whole heavens, that it was not even possible to catch a star of any

size passing the meridian.

Achmim is a very considerable place. It belonged once to an Arab prince

of that name, who possessed it by a grant from the Grand Signior, for

a certain revenue to be paid yearly. That family is now extinct; and

another Arab prince, Hamam Shekh of Furshout, now rents it for his

life-time, from the Grand Signior, with all the country (except Girgé),

from Siout to Luxor.

The inhabitants of Achmim are of a very yellow, unhealthy appearance,

probably owing to the bad air, occasioned by a very dirty calish that

passes through the town. There are, likewise, a great many trees,

bushes, and gardens, about the stagnated water, all which increase the

bad quality of the air.

There is here what is called a Hospice, or Convent of religious

Franciscans, for the entertainment of the converts, or persecuted

Christians in Nubia, _when they can find them_. This institution I

speak of at large in the sequel. One of the last princes of the house

of Medicis, all patrons of learning, proposed to furnish them with a

compleat observatory, with the most perfect and expensive instruments;

but they refused them, from a scruple least it would give umbrage to

the natives. The fear that it should expose their own ignorance and

idleness, I must think, entered a little into the consideration.

They received us civilly, and that was just all. I think I never knew

a number of priests met together, who differed so little in capacity

and knowledge, having barely a routine of scholastic disputation,

on every other subject inconceivably ignorant. But I understood

afterwards, that they were low men, all Italians; some of them had been

barbers, and some of them tailors at Milan; they affected to be all

Anti-Copernicans, upon scripture principles, for they knew no other

astronomy.

These priests lived in great ease and safety, were much protected and

favoured by this Arab prince Hamam; and their acting as physicians

reconciled them to the people. They told me there were about eight

hundred catholics in the town, but I believe the fifth part of that

number would never have been found, even such catholics as they are.

The rest of them were Cophts, and Moors, but a very few of the latter,

so that the missionaries live perfectly unmolested.

There was a manufactory of coarse cotton cloth in the town, to

considerable extent; and great quantity of poultry, esteemed the best

in Egypt, was bred here, and sent down to Cairo. The reason is plain,

the great export from Achmim is wheat; all the country about it is sown

with that grain, and the crops are superior to any in Egypt. Thirty-two

grains pulled from the ear was equal to forty-nine of the best Barbary

wheat gathered in the same season; a prodigious disproportion, if it

holds throughout. The wheat, however, was not much more forward in

Upper Egypt, than that lower down the country, or farther northward. It

was little more than four inches high, and sown down to the very edge

of the water.

The people _here_ wisely pursuing agriculture, so as to produce wheat

in the greatest quantity, have dates only about their houses, and a

few plantations of sugar cane near their gardens. As soon as they have

reaped their wheat, they sow for another crop, before the sun has

drained the moisture from the ground. Great plenty of excellent fish

is caught here at Achmim, particularly a large one called the Binny, a

figure of which I have given in the Appendix. I have seen them about

four feet long, and one foot and a half broad.

The people seemed to be very peaceable, and well disposed, but of

little curiosity. They expressed not the least surprise at seeing my

large quadrant and telescopes mounted. We passed the night in our tent

upon the river side, without any sort of molestation, though the men

are reproached with being very great thieves. But seeing, I suppose, by

our lights, that we were awake, they were afraid.

The women seldom marry after sixteen; we saw several with child, who

they said were not eleven years old. Yet I did not observe that the

men were less in size, less vigorous and active in body, than in other

places. This, one would not imagine from the appearance these young

wives make. They are little better coloured than a corpse, and look

older at sixteen, than many English women at sixty, so that you are to

look for beauty here in childhood only.

Achmim appears to be the Panopolis of the ancients, not only by its

latitude, but also by an inscription of a very large triumphal arch, a

few hundred yards south of the convent. It is built with marble by the

Emperor Nero, and is dedicated in a Greek inscription, ΠΑΝΙ ΘΕΩ. The

columns that were in its front are broken and thrown away; the arch

itself is either sunk into the ground, or overturned on the side, with

little separation of the several pieces.

The 24th of December we left Achmim, and came to the village Shekh Ali

on the west, two miles and a quarter distant. We then passed Hamdi,

about the same distance farther south; Aboudarac and Salladi on the

east; then Salladi Garbieh, and Salladi Shergieh on the east and west,

as the names import; and a number of villages, almost opposite, on each

side of the river.

At three o’clock in the afternoon we arrived at Girgé, the largest

town we had seen since we left Cairo; which, by the latitude Ptolemy

has very rightly placed it in, should be the Diospolis Parva, and not

Gawa, as Mr Norden makes it. For this we know is the beginning of the

Diospolitan nome, and is near a remarkable crook of the Nile, as it

should be. It is also on the western side of the river, as Diospolis

was, and at a proper distance from Dendera, the ancient Tentyra, a mark

which cannot be mistaken.

The Nile makes a kind of loop here; is very broad, and the current

strong. We passed it with a wind at north; but the waves ran high as

in the ocean. All the country, on both sides of the Nile, to Girgé, is

but one continued grove of palm-trees, in which are several villages a

small distance from each other, Doulani, Consaed, Deirout, and Berdis,

on the west side; Welled Hallifi, and Beni Haled, on the east.

The villages have all a very picturesque appearance among the trees,

from the many pigeon-houses that are on the tops of them. The mountains

on the east begin to depart from the river, and those on the west to

approach nearer it. It seems to me, that, soon, the greatest part of

Egypt on the east side of the Nile, between Achmim and Cairo, will be

desert; not from the rising of the ground by the mud, as is supposed,

but from the quantity of sand from the mountains, which covers the

mould or earth several feet deep. This 24th of December, at night, we

anchored between two villages, Beliani and Mobanniny.

Next morning, the 25th, impatient to visit the greatest, and most

magnificent scene of ruins that are in Upper Egypt, we set out from

Beliani, and, about ten o’clock in the forenoon, arrived at Dendera.

Although we had heard that the people of this place were the very worst

in Egypt, we were not very apprehensive. We had two letters from the

Bey, to the two principal men there, commanding them, as they would

answer with their lives and fortunes, to have a special care that no

mischief befel us; and likewise a very pressing letter to Shekh Hamam

at Furshout, in whose territory we were.

I pitched my tent by the river side, just above our bark, and sent a

message to the two principal people, first to the one, then to the

other, desiring them to send a proper person, for I had to deliver to

them the commands of the Bey. I did not choose to trust these letters

with our boatman; and Dendera is near half a mile from the river.

The two men came after some delay, and brought each of them a sheep;

received the letters, went back with great speed, and, soon after,

returned with a horse and three asses, to carry me to the ruins.

Dendera is a considerable town at this day, all covered with thick

groves of palm-trees, the same that Juvenal describes it to have been

in his time. Juvenal himself must have seen it, at least once, in

passing, as he himself died in a kind of honourable exile at Syene,

whilst in command there.

_Terga fugæ celeri, præstantibus omnibus instant,_

_Qui vicina colunt umbrosæ Tentyra palmæ._

JUV. Sat. 15. v. 75

This place is governed by a cacheff appointed by Shekh Hamam. A mile

south of the town, are the ruins of two temples, one of which is so

much buried under ground, that little of it is to be seen; but the

other, which is by far the most magnificent, is entire, and accessible

on every side. It is also covered with hieroglyphics, both within and

without, all in relief; and of every figure, simple and compound, that

ever has been published, or called an hieroglyphic.

The form of the building is an oblong square, the ends of which are

occupied by two large apartments, or vestibules, supported by monstrous

columns, all covered with hieroglyphics likewise. Some are in form

of men and beasts; some seem to be the figures of instruments of

sacrifice, while others, in a smaller size, and less distinct form,

seem to be inscriptions in the current hand of hieroglyphics, of which

I shall speak at large afterwards. They are all finished with great

care.

The capitals are of one piece, and consist of four huge human heads,

placed back to back against one another, with bat’s ears, and an

ill-imagined, and worse-executed, fold of drapery between them.

Above these is a large oblong square block, still larger than the

capitals, with four flat fronts, disposed like pannels, that is, with a

kind of square border round the edges, while the faces and fronts are

filled with hieroglyphics; as are the walls and ceilings of every part

of the temple. Between these two apartments in the extremities, there

are three other apartments, resembling the first, in every respect,

only that they are smaller.

The whole building is of common white stone, from the neighbouring

mountains, only those two in which have been sunk the pirns for hanging

the outer doors, (for it seems they had doors even in those days) are

of granite, or black and blue porphyry.

The top of the temple is flat, the spouts to carry off the water

are monstrous heads of sphinxes; the globes with wings, and the two

serpents, with a kind of shield or breast-plate between them, are here

frequently repeated, such as we see them on the Carthaginian medals.

The hieroglyphics have been painted over, and great part of the

colouring yet remains upon the stones, red, in all its shades,

especially that dark dusky colour called Tyrian Purple; yellow, very

fresh; sky-blue (that is, near the blue of an eastern sky, several

shades lighter than ours); green of different shades; these are all the

colours preserved.

I could discover no vestiges of common houses in Dendera more than in

any other of the great towns in Egypt. I suppose the common houses of

the ancients, in these warm countries, were constructed of very slight

materials, after they left their caves in the mountains. There was

indeed no need for any other. Not knowing the regularity of the Nile’s

inundation, they never could be perfectly secure in their own minds

against the deluge; and this slight structure of private buildings

seems to be the reason so few ruins are found in the many cities once

built in Egypt. If there ever were any other buildings, they must be

now covered with the white sand from the mountains, for the whole plain

to the foot of these is o’erflowed, and in cultivation. It was no part,

either of my plan or inclination, to enter into the detail of this

extraordinary architecture. Quantity, and solidity, are two principal

circumstances that are seen there, with a vengeance.

It strikes and imposes on you, at first sight, but the impressions

are like those made by the size of mountains, which the mind does not

retain for any considerable time after seeing them; I think, a very

ready hand might spend six months, from morning to night, before he

could copy the hieroglyphics in the inside of the temple. They are,

however, in several combinations, which have not appeared in the

collection of hieroglyphics. I wonder that, being in the neighbourhood,

as we are, of Lycopolis, we never see a wolf as an hieroglyphic; and

nothing, indeed, but what has some affinity to water; yet the wolf is

upon all the medals, from which I apprehend that the worship of the

wolf was but a modern superstition.

Dendera stands on the edge of a small, but fruitful plain; the wheat

was thirteen inches high, now at Christmas; their harvest is in the

end of March. The valley is not above five miles wide, from mountain

to mountain. Here we first saw the Doom-tree in great profusion

growing among the palms, from which it scarcely is distinguishable at

a distance. It is the [113]Palma Thebaica Cuciofera. Its stone is like

that of a peach covered with a black bitter pulp, which resembles a

walnut over ripe.

A little before we came to Dendera we saw the first crocodile, and

afterwards hundreds, lying upon every island, like large flocks of

cattle, yet the inhabitants of Dendera drive their beasts of every kind

into the river, and they stand there for hours. The girls and women

too, that come to fetch water in jars, stand up to their knees in the

water for a considerable time; and if we guess by what happens, their

danger is full as little as their fear, for none of them, that ever I

heard of, had been bit by a crocodile. However, if the Denderites were

as keen and expert hunters of Crocodiles, as some [114]historians tell

us they were formerly, there is surely no part in the Nile where they

would have better sport than here, immediately before their own city.

Having made some little acknowledgment to those who had conducted me

through the ruins in great safety, I returned to the Canja, or rather

to my tent, which I placed in the first firm ground. I saw, at some

distance, a well-dressed man, with a white turban, and yellow shawl

covering it, and a number of ill-looking people about him. As I thought

this was some quarrel among the natives, I took no notice of it, but

went to my tent, in order to rectify my quadrant for observation.

As soon as our Rais saw me enter my tent, he came with expressions of

very great indignation. “What signifies it, said he, that you are a

friend to the Bey, have letters to every body, and are at the door of

Furshout, if yet here is a man that will take your boat away from you?”

“Softly, softly, I answered, Hassan, he may be in the right. If Ali

Bey, Shekh Hamam, or any body want a boat for public service, I must

yield mine. Let us hear.”

“Shekh Hamam and Ali Bey! says he; why it is a fool, an idiot, and an

ass; a fellow that goes begging about, and says he is a saint; but he

is a natural fool, full as much knave as fool however; he is a thief, I

know him to be a thief.”

“If he is a saint, said I, Hagi Hassan, as you are another, known to

be so all the world over, I don’t see why I should interfere; saint

against saint is a fair battle.”--“It is the Cadi, replies he, and no

one else.”

“Come away with me, said I, Hassan, and let us see this cadi; if it is

the cadi, it is not the fool, it may be the knave.”

He was sitting upon the ground on a carpet, moving his head backwards

and forwards, and saying prayers with beads in his hand. I had no

good opinion of him from his first appearance, but said, _Salam

alicum_, boldly; this seemed to offend him, as he looked at me with

great contempt, and gave me no answer, though he appeared a little

disconcerted by my confidence.

“Are you the _Cafr_, said he, to whom that boat belongs?”

“No, Sir, said I, it belongs to Hagi Hassan.”

“Do you think, says he, I call Hagi Hassan, who is a Sherriffe, _Cafr_?”

“That depends upon the measure of your prudence, said I, of which as

yet I have no proof that can enable me to judge or decide.”

“Are you the _Christian_ that was at the ruins in the morning? says he.”

“I was at the ruins in the morning, replied I, and _I am a Christian_.

Ali Bey calls that denomination of people _Nazarani_, that is the

Arabic of Cairo and Constantinople, and I understand no other.”

“I am, said he, going to Girgé, and this holy saint is with me, and

there is no boat but your’s bound that way, for which reason I have

promised to take him with me.”

By this time the _saint_ had got into the boat, and sat forward; he was

an ill-favoured, low, sick-like man, and seemed to be almost blind.

You should not make rash promises, said I to the cadi, for this one you

made you never can perform; I am not going to Girgé. Ali Bey, _whose

slave you are_, gave me this boat, but told me, I was not to ship

either saints or cadies. There is my boat, go a-board if you dare; and

you, Hagi Hassan, let me see you lift an oar, or loose a sail, either

for the cadi or the saint, if I am not with them.

I went to my tent, and the Rais followed me. “Hagi Hassan, said I,

there is a proverb in my country, It is better to flatter fools than to

fight them: Cannot you go to the fool, and give him half-a-crown? will

he take it, do you think, and abandon his journey to Girgé? afterwards

leave me to settle with the cadi for his voyage thither.”

“He will take it with all his heart, he will kiss your hand for

half-a-crown, says Hassan.”

“Let him have half-a-crown from me, said I, and desire him to go about

his business, and intimate that I give him it in charity, at same time

expect compliance with the condition.”

In the interim, a Christian Copht came into the tent: “Sir, said he,

you don’t know what you are doing; the cadi is a great man, give him

his present, and have done with him.”

“When he behaves better, it will be time enough for that, said I?--If

you are a friend of his, advise him to be quiet, before an order comes

from Cairo by a Serach, and carries him thither. Your countryman Risk

would not give me the advice you do?”

Risk! says he; Do you know Risk? Is not that Risk’s writing, said I,

shewing him a letter from the Bey? Wallah! (by God) it is, says he, and

away he went without speaking a word farther.

The saint had taken his half-crown, and had gone away singing, it

being now near dark.--The cadi went away, and the mob dispersed, and

we directed a Moor to cry, That all people should, in the night-time,

keep away from the tent, or they would be fired at; a stone or two were

afterwards thrown, but did not reach us.

I finished my observation, and ascertained the latitude of Dendera,

then packed up my instruments, and sent them on board.

Mr Norden seems greatly to have mistaken the position of this town,

which, conspicuous and celebrated as it is by ancient authors, and

justly a principal point of attention to modern travellers, he does

not so much as describe; and, in his map, he places Dendera twenty or

thirty miles to the southward of Badjoura; whereas it is about nine

miles to the northward. For Badjoura is in lat. 26° 3´, and Dendera is

in 26° 10´.

It is a great pity, that he who had a taste for this very remarkable

kind of architecture, should have passed it, both in going up and

coming down; as it is, beyond comparison, a place that would have given

more satisfaction than all Upper Egypt.

While we were striking our tent, a great mob came down, but without the

cadi. As I ordered all my people to take their arms in their hands,

they kept at a very considerable distance; but the fool, or saint, got

into the boat with a yellow flag in his hand, and sat down at the foot

of the main-mast, saying, with an idiot smile, That we should fire, for

he was out of the reach of the shot; some stones were thrown, but did

not reach us.

I ordered two of my servants with large brass ship-blunderbusses,

very bright and glittering, to get upon the top of the cabbin. I then

pointed a wide-mouthed Swedish blunderbuss from one of the windows, and

cried out, Have a care;--the next stone that is thrown I fire my cannon

amongst you, which will sweep away 300 of you instantly from the face

of the earth; though I believe there were not above two hundred then

present.

I ordered Hagi Hassan to cast off his cord immediately, and, as soon as

the blunderbuss appeared, away ran every one of them, and, before they

could collect themselves to return, our vessel was in the middle of the

stream. The wind was fair, though not very fresh, on which we set both

our sails, and made great way.

The saint, who had been singing all the time we were disputing, began

now to shew some apprehensions for his own safety: He asked Hagi

Hassan, if this was the way to Girgé? and had for answer, “Yes, it is

the fool’s way to Girgé.”

We carried him about a mile, or more, up the river; then a convenient

landing-place offering, I asked him whether he got my money, or not,

last night? He said, he had for yesterday, but he had got none for

to-day.--“Now, the next thing I have to ask you, said I, is, Will you

go ashore of your own accord, or will you be thrown into the Nile? He

answered with great confidence, Do you know, that, at my word, I can

fix your boat to the bottom of the Nile, and make it grow a tree there

for ever?” “Aye, says Hagi Hassan, and make oranges and lemons grow on

it likewise, can’t you? You are a cheat.” “Come, Sirs, said I, lose no

time, put him out.” I thought he had been blind and weak; and the boat

was not within three feet of the shore, when placing one foot upon the

gunnel, he leaped clean upon land.

We slacked our vessel down the stream a few yards, filling our sails,

and stretching away. Upon seeing this, our saint fell into a desperate

passion, cursing, blaspheming, and stamping with his feet, at every

word crying “Shar Ullah!” _i. e._ may God send, and do justice. Our

people began to taunt and gibe him, asking him if he would have a pipe

of tobacco to warm him, as the morning was very cold; but I bade them

be content. It was curious to see him, as far as we could discern,

sometimes sitting down, sometimes jumping and skipping about, and

waving his flag, then running about a hundred yards, as if it were

after us; but always returning, though at a slower pace.

None of the rest followed. He was indeed apparently the tool of that

rascal the cadi, and, after his designs were frustrated, nobody cared

what became of him. He was left in the lurch, as those of his character

generally are, after serving the purpose of _knaves_.

CHAP. VI.

_Arrive at Furshout--Adventure of Friar Christopher--Visit

Thebes--Luxor and Carnac--Large Ruins at Edfu and Esné--Proceed

on our Voyage._

We arrived happily at Furshout that same forenoon, and went to the

convent of Italian Friars, who, like those of Achmim, are of the order

of the reformed Franciscans, of whose mission I shall speak at large in

the sequel.

We were received more kindly here than at Achmim; but Padre Antonio,

superior of that last convent, upon which this of Furshout also

depends, following us, our good reception suffered a small abatement.

In short, the good Friars would not let us _buy_ meat, because they

said it would be a _shame_ and _reproach_ to them; and they would not

_give_ us any, for fear that should be a reproach to them likewise, if

it was told in Europe they _lived well_.

After some time I took the liberty of providing for myself, to which

they submitted with christian patience. Yet these convents were founded

expressly with a view, and from a necessity of providing for travellers

between Egypt and Ethiopia, and we were strictly intitled to that

entertainment. Indeed there is very little use for this institution in

Upper Egypt, as long as rich Arabs are there, much more charitable and

humane to stranger Christians than the Monks.

Furshout is in a large and cultivated plain. It is nine miles over to

the foot of the mountains, all sown with wheat. There are, likewise,

plantations of sugar canes. The town, as they said, contains above

10,000 people, but I have no doubt this computation is rather

exaggerated.

We waited upon the Shekh Hamam; who was a big, tall, handsome man;

I apprehend not far from sixty. He was dressed in a large fox-skin

pelisse over the rest of his cloaths, and had a yellow India shawl

wrapt about his head, like a turban. He received me with great

politeness and condescension, made me sit down by him, and asked me

more about Cairo than about Europe.

The Rais had told him our adventure with the saint, at which he laughed

very heartily, saying, I was a wise man and a man of conduct. To me

he only said, “they are bad people at Dendera;” to which I answered,

“there were very few places in the world in which there were not some

bad.” He replied, “Your observation is true, but there they are all

bad; rest yourselves however here, it is a quiet place; though there

are still some even in this place not quite so good as they _ought_ to

be.”

The Shekh was a man of immense riches, and, little by little, had

united in his own person, all the separate districts of Upper Egypt,

each of which formerly had its particular prince. But his interest was

great at Constantinople, where he applied directly for what he wanted,

insomuch as to give a jealousy to the Beys of Cairo. He had in farm

from the Grand Signior almost the whole country, between Siout and

Syene, or Assouan. I believe this is the Shekh of Upper Egypt, whom Mr

Irvine speaks of so gratefully. He was betrayed, and murdered some time

after, by one of the Beys whom he had protected in his own country.

While we were at Furshout, there happened a very extraordinary

phænomenon. It rained the whole night, and till about nine o’clock next

morning; and the people began to be very apprehensive least the whole

town should be destroyed. It is a perfect prodigy to see rain here; and

the prophets said it portended a dissolution of government, which was

justly verified soon afterwards, and at that time indeed was extremely

probable.

Furshout is in lat 26° 3´30´´; above that, to the southward, on the

same plain, is another large village, belonging to Shekh Ismael, a

nephew of Shekh Hamam. It is _a large town_, built with clay like

Furshout, and surrounded with groves of palm trees, and very large

plantations of sugar canes. Here they make sugar.

Shekh Ismael was a very pleasant and agreeable man, but in bad health,

having a violent asthma, and sometimes pleuretic complaints, to be

removed by bleeding only. He had given these friars a house for a

convent in Badjoura; but as they had not yet taken possession of it, he

desired me to come and stay there.

Friar Christopher, whom I understood to have been a Milanese barber,

was his physician, but he had not the science of an English barber in

surgery. He could not bleed, but with a sort of instrument resembling

that which is used in cupping, only that it had but a single lancet;

with this he had been lucky enough as yet to escape laming his

patients. This bleeding instrument they call the Tabange, or the

Pistol, as they do the cupping instrument likewise. I never could help

shuddering at seeing the confidence with which this man placed a small

brass box upon all sorts of arms, and drew the trigger for the point to

go where fortune pleased.

Shekh Ismael was very fond of this surgeon, and the surgeon of his

patron; all would have gone well, had not friar Christopher aimed

likewise at being an Astronomer. Above all he gloried in being a

violent enemy to the Copernican system, which unluckily he had mistaken

for a heresy in the church; and partly from his own slight ideas and

stock of knowledge, partly from some Milanese almanacs he had got, he

attempted, the weather being cloudy, to foretel the time when the moon

was to change, it being that of the month Ramadan, when the Mahometans’

lent, or fasting, was to begin.

It happened that the Badjoura people, and their Shekh Ismael, were

upon indifferent terms with Hamam, and his men of Furshout, and being

desirous to get a triumph over their neighbours by the help of their

friar Christopher, they continued to eat, drink, and smoke, two days

after the conjunction.

The moon had been seen the second night, by a Fakir[115], in the

desert, who had sent word to Shekh Hamam, and he had begun his fast.

But Ismael, assured by friar Christopher that it was impossible, had

continued eating.

The people of Furshout, meeting their neighbours singing and dancing,

and with pipes of tobacco in their mouths, _all cried out_ with

astonishment, and asked, “Whether they had abjured their religion or

not?”--From words they came to blows; seven or eight were wounded on

each side, luckily none of them mortally.--Hamam next day came to

inquire at his nephew Shekh Ismael, what had been the occasion of all

this, and to consult what was to be done, for the two villages had

declared one another infidels.

I was then with my servants in Badjoura, in great quiet and

tranquillity, under the protection, and very much in the confidence

of Ismael; but hearing the hooping, and noise in the streets, I had

barricadoed my outer-doors. A high wall surrounded the house and

court-yard, and there I kept quiet, satisfied with being in perfect

safety.

In the interim, I heard it was a quarrel about the keeping of Ramadan,

and, as I had provisions, water, and employment enough in the house,

I resolved to stay at home till they fought it out; being very little

interested which of them should be victorious.--About noon, I was sent

for to Ismael’s house, and found his uncle Hamam with him.

He told me, there were several wounded in a quarrel about the Ramadan,

and recommended them to my care. “About Ramadan, said I! what, your

principal fast! have you not settled that yet?”--Without answering me

as to this, he asked, “When does the moon change?” As I knew nothing

of friar Christopher’s operations, I answered, in hours, minutes, and

seconds, as I found them in the ephemerides.

“Look you there, says Hamam, this is fine work!” and, directing

his discourse to me, “When shall we see it?” Sir, said I, that is

impossible for me to tell, as it depends on the state of the heavens;

but, if the sky is clear, you must see her to-night; if you had looked

for her, probably you would have seen her last night low in the

horizon, thin like a thread; she is now three days old.--He started at

this, then told me friar Christopher’s operation, and the consequences

of it.

Ismael was ashamed, cursed him, and threatened revenge. It was too

late to retract, the moon appeared, and spoke for herself; and the

unfortunate friar was disgraced, and banished from Badjoura. Luckily

the pleuretic stitch came again, and I was called to bleed him, which

I did with a lancet; but he was so terrified at its brightness, at the

ceremony of the towel and the bason, and at my preparation, that it

did not please him, and therefore he was obliged to be reconciled to

Christopher and his tabange.--Badjoura is in lat. 26° 3´ 16´´; and is

situated on the western shore of the Nile, as Furshout is likewise.

We left Furshout the 7th of January 1769, early in the morning. We had

not hired our boat farther than Furshout; but the good terms which

subsisted between me and the saint, my Rais, made an accommodation

very easy to carry us farther. He now agreed for L. 4 to carry us to

Syene and down again; but, if he behaved well, he expected a trifling

premium. “And, if you behave ill, Hassan, said I, what do you think you

deserve?”--“To be hanged, said he, I deserve, and desire no better.”

Our wind at first was but scant. The Rais said, that he thought his

boat did not go as it used to do, and that it was growing into a tree.

The wind, however, freshened up towards noon, and eased him of his

fears. We passed a large town called How, on the west side of the Nile.

About four o’clock in the afternoon we arrived at El Gourni, a small

village, a quarter of a mile distant from the Nile. It has in it a

temple of old Egyptian architecture. I think that this, and the two

adjoining heaps of ruins, which are at the same distance from the Nile,

probably might have been part of the ancient Thebes.

Shaamy and Taamy are two colossal statues in a sitting posture covered

with hieroglyphics. The southmost is of one stone, and perfectly

entire. The northmost is a good deal more mutilated. It was probably

broken by Cambyses; and they have since endeavoured to repair it.

The other has a very remarkable head-dress, which can be compared to

nothing but a tye-wig, such as worn in the present day. These two,

situated in a very fertile spot belonging to Thebes, were apparently

the Nilometers of that town, as the marks which the water has left

upon the bases sufficiently shew. The bases of both of them are bare,

and uncovered, to the bottom of the plinth, or lowest member of their

pedestal; so that there is not the eighth of an inch of the lowest part

of them covered with mud, though they stand in the middle of a plain,

and have stood there certainly above 3000 years; since which time, if

the fanciful rise of the land of Egypt by the Nile had been true, the

earth should have been raised so as fully to conceal half of them both.

These statues are covered with inscriptions of Greek and Latin; the

import of which seems to be, that there were certain travellers, or

particular people, who heard Memnon’s statue utter the sound it was

said to do, upon being struck with the rays of the sun.

It may be very reasonably expected, that I should here say something

of the building and fall of the first Thebes; but as this would carry

me to very early ages, and interrupt for a long time my voyage upon

the Nile; as this is, besides, connected with the history of several

nations which I am about to describe, and more proper for the work of

an historian, than the cursory descriptions of a traveller, I shall

defer saying any thing upon the subject, till I come to treat of it in

the first of these characters, and more especially till I shall speak

of the origin of the _Shepherds_, and the calamities brought upon Egypt

by that powerful nation, a people often mentioned by different writers,

but whose history hitherto has been but imperfectly known.

Nothing remains of the ancient Thebes but four prodigious temples,

all of them in appearance more ancient, but neither so entire, nor so

magnificent, as those of Dendera. The temples at Medinet Tabu are

the most elegant of these. The hieroglyphics are cut to the depth of

half-a-foot, in some places, but we have still the same figures, or

rather a less variety, than at Dendera.

The hieroglyphics are of four sorts; first, such as have only the

contour marked, and, as it were, scratched only in the stone. The

second are hollowed; and in the middle of that space rises the figure

in relief, so that the prominent part of the figure is equal to the

flat, unwrought surface of the stone, and seems to have a frame round

it, designed to defend the hieroglyphic from mutilation. The third

sort is in relief, or basso relievo, as it is called, where the figure

is left bare and exposed, without being sunk in, or defended, by any

compartment cut round it in the stone. The fourth are those mentioned

in the beginning of this description, the outlines of the figure being

cut very deep in the stone.

All the hieroglyphics, but the last mentioned, which do not admit it,

are painted red, blue, and green, as at Dendera, and with no other

colours.

Notwithstanding all this variety in the manner of executing the

hieroglyphical figures, and the prodigious multitude which I have seen

in the several buildings, I never could make the number of different

hieroglyphics amount to more than five hundred and fourteen, and of

these there were certainly many, which were not really different,

but from the ill execution of the sculpture only appeared so. From

this I conclude, certainly, that it can be no entire language which

hieroglyphics are meant to contain, for no language could be

comprehended in five hundred words, and it is probable that these

hieroglyphics are not _alphabetical_, or _single letters_ only; for

five hundred letters would make _too large_ an alphabet. The Chinese

indeed have many more letters in use, but have no alphabet, but _who is

it that understands the Chinese_?

There are three different characters which, I observe, have been in use

at the same time in Egypt, Hieroglyphics, the Mummy character, and the

Ethiopic. These are all three found, as I have seen, on the same mummy,

and therefore were certainly used at the same time. The last only I

believe was a _language_.

The mountains immediately above or behind Thebes, are hollowed out into

numberless caverns, the first habitations of the Ethiopian colony which

built the city. I imagine they continued long in these habitations,

for I do not think the temples were ever intended but for _public_ and

_solemn_ uses, and in none of these ancient cities did I ever see a

wall or foundation, or any thing like a private house; all are temples

and tombs, if temples and tombs in those times were not the same thing.

But vestiges of houses there are none, whatever[116] Diodorus Siculus

may say, building with stone was too expensive for individuals; the

houses probably were all of clay, thatched with palm branches, as they

are at this day. This is one reason why so few ruins of the immense

number of cities we hear of remain.

Thebes, according to Homer, had a _hundred gates_. We cannot, however,

discover yet the foundation of any wall that it had; and as for the

horsemen and chariots it is said to have sent out, all the Thebaid sown

with wheat would not have maintained _one-half_ of them.

Thebes, at least the ruins of the temples, called Medinet Tabu, are

built in a long stretch of about a mile broad, most parsimoniously

chosen at the sandy foot of the mountains. The Horti[117] Pensiles,

or hanging gardens, were surely formed upon the sides of these hills,

then supplied with water by mechanical devices. The utmost is done to

spare the plain, and with great reason; for all the space of ground

this ancient city has had to maintain its myriads of horses and men,

is a plain of three quarters of a mile broad, between the town and the

river, upon which plain the water rises to the height of four, and five

feet, as we may judge by the marks on the statues Shaamy and Taamy.

All this pretended populousness of ancient Thebes I therefore believe

fabulous.

It is a circumstance very remarkable, in building the first temples,

that, where the side-walls are solid, that is, not supported by

pillars, some of these have their angles and faces perpendicular,

others inclined in a very considerable angle to the horizon. Those

temples, whose walls are inclined, you may judge by the many

hieroglyphics and ornaments, are of the first ages, or the greatest

antiquity. From which, I am disposed to think, that singular

construction was a remnant of the partiality of the builders for their

first domiciles; an imitation of the slope[118], or inclination of the

sides of mountains, and that this inclination of flat surfaces to each

other in building, gave afterwards the first idea of Pyramids[119].

A number of robbers, who much resemble our gypsies, live in the holes

of the mountains above Thebes. They are all out-laws, punished with

death if elsewhere found. Osman Bey, an ancient governor of Girgé,

unable to suffer any longer the disorders committed by these people,

ordered a quantity of dried faggots to be brought together, and, with

his soldiers, took, possession of the face of the mountain, where the

greatest number of these wretches were: He then ordered all their

caves to be filled with this dry brushwood, to which he set fire, so

that most of them were destroyed; but they have since recruited their

numbers, without changing their manners.

About half a mile north of El Gourni, are the magnificent, stupendous

sepulchres, of Thebes. The mountains of the Thebaid come close behind

the town; they are not run in upon one another like ridges, but stand

insulated upon their bases; so that you can get round each of them.

A hundred of these, it is said, are excavated into sepulchral, and

a variety of other apartments. I went through seven of them with a

great deal of fatigue. It is a solitary place; and my guides, either

from a natural impatience and distaste that these people have at such

employments, or, that their fears of the banditti that live in the

caverns of the mountains were real, importuned me to return to the

boat, even before I had begun my search, or got into the mountains

where are the many large apartments of which I was in quest.

In the first one of these I entered is the prodigious sarcophagus, some

say of Menes, others of Osimandyas; possibly of neither. It is sixteen

feet high, ten long, and six broad, of one piece of red-granite; and,

as such, is, I suppose, the finest vase in the world. Its cover is

still upon it, (broken on one side,) and it has a figure in relief

on the outside. It is not probably the tomb of Osimandyas, because,

Diodorus[120] says, that it was ten stadia from the tomb of the kings;

whereas this is one among them.

There have been some ornaments at the outer-pillars, or outer-entry,

which have been broken and thrown down. Thence you descend through an

inclined passage, I suppose, about twenty feet broad; I speak only by

guess, for I did not measure. The side-walls, as well as the roof of

this passage, are covered with a coat of stucco, of a finer and more

equal grain, or surface, than any I ever saw in Europe. I found my

black-lead pencil little more worn by it than by writing upon paper.

Upon the left-hand side is the crocodile seizing upon the apis, and

plunging him into the water. On the right-hand is the [121]scarabæus

thebaicus, or the thebaic beetle, the first animal that is seen alive

after the Nile retires from the land; and therefore thought to be an

emblem of the resurrection. My own conjecture is, that the apis was

the emblem of the arable land of Egypt; the crocodile, the typhon, or

cacodæmon, the type of an over-abundant Nile; that the scarabæus was

the land which had been overflowed, and from which the water had soon

retired, and has nothing to do with the resurrection or immortality,

neither of which at that time were in contemplation.

Farther forward on the right-hand of the entry, the pannels, or

compartments, were still formed in stucco, but, in place of figures

in relief, they were painted in fresco. I dare say this was the case

on the left-hand of the passage, as well as the right. But the first

discovery was so unexpected, and I had flattered myself that I should

be so far master of my own time, as to see the whole at my leisure,

that I was rivetted, as it were, to the spot by the first sight of

these paintings, and I could proceed no further.

In one pannel were several musical instruments strowed upon the

ground, chiefly of the hautboy kind, with a mouth-piece of reed.

There were also some simple pipes or flutes. With them were several

jars apparently of potter-ware, which, having their mouths covered

with parchment or skin, and being braced on their sides like a drum,

were probably the instrument called the _tabor_, or[122]_tabret_,

beat upon by the hands, coupled in earliest ages with the harp, and

preserved still in Abyssinia, though its companion, the last-mentioned

instrument, is no longer known _there_.

In three following pannels were painted, in fresco, three harps, which

merited the utmost attention, whether we consider the elegance of these

instruments in their form, and the detail of their parts as they are

here clearly expressed, or confine ourselves to the reflection that

necessarily follows, to how great perfection music must have arrived,

before an artist could have produced so complete an instrument as

either of these.

As the first harp seemed to be the most perfect, and least spoiled, I

immediately attached myself to this, and desired my clerk to take upon

him the charge of the second. In this way, by sketching exactly, and

loosely, I hoped to have made myself master of all the paintings in

that cave, perhaps to have extended my researches to others, though, in

the sequel, I found myself miserably deceived.

My first drawing was that of a man playing upon a harp; he was

standing, and the instrument being broad, and flat at the base,

probably for that purpose, supported itself easily with a very little

inclination upon his arm; his head is close shaved, his eye-brows

black, without beard or mustachoes. He has on him a loose shirt,

like what they wear at this day in Nubia (only it is not blue) with

loose sleeves, and arms and neck bare. It seemed to be thick muslin,

or cotton cloth, and long-ways through it is a crimson stripe about

one-eighth of an inch broad; a proof, if this is Egyptian manufacture,

that they understood at that time how to dye cotton, crimson, an art

found out in Britain only a very few years ago. If this is the fabric

of India, still it proves the antiquity of the commerce between the two

countries, and the introduction of Indian manufactures into Egypt.

[Illustration: _Painting in Fresco, in the Sepulchres of Thebes._

_London Publish’d Dec^{r}. 1^{st}. 1789 by G. Robinson & Co._]

It reached down to his ancle; his feet are without sandals; he seems to

be a corpulent man, of about sixty years of age, and of a complexion

rather dark for an Egyptian. To guess by the detail of the figure,

the painter seems to have had the same degree of merit with a good

sign-painter in Europe, at this day.--If we allow this harper’s stature

to be five feet ten inches, then we may compute the harp, in its

extreme length, to be something less than six feet and a half.

This instrument is of a much more advantageous form than the triangular

Grecian harp. It has thirteen strings, but wants the forepiece of

the frame opposite to the longest string. The back part is the

sounding-board, composed of four thin pieces of wood, joined together

in form of a cone, that is, growing wider towards the bottom; so that,

as the length of the string increases, the square of the corresponding

space in the sounding-board, in which the sound was to undulate, always

increases in proportion. The whole principles, on which this harp is

constructed, are rational and ingenious, and the ornamented parts are

executed in the very best manner.

The bottom and sides of the frame seem to be fineered, and inlaid,

probably with ivory, tortoise-shell, and mother-of-pearl, the ordinary

produce of the neighbouring seas and deserts. It would be even now

impossible, either to construct or to finish a harp of any form with

more taste and elegance. Besides the proportions of its outward

form, we must observe likewise how near it approached to a perfect

instrument, for it wanted only two strings of having two complete

octaves; that these were purposely omitted, not from defect of taste or

science, must appear beyond contradiction, when we consider the harp

that follows.

I had no sooner finished the harp which I had taken in hand, than I

went to my assistant, to see what progress he had made in the drawing

in which he was engaged. I found, to my very great surprise, that this

harp differed essentially, in form and distribution of its parts,

from the one I had drawn, without having lost any of its elegance; on

the contrary, that it was finished with full more attention than the

other. It seemed to be fineered with the same materials, ivory and

tortoise-shell, but the strings were differently disposed, the ends of

the three longest, where they joined to the sounding-board below, were

defaced by a hole dug in the wall. Several of the strings in different

parts had been scraped as with a knife, for the rest, it was very

perfect. It had eighteen strings. A man, who seemed to be still older

than the former, but in habit perfectly the same, bare-footed, close

shaved, and of the same complexion with him, stood playing with

both his hands near the middle of the harp, in a manner seemingly less

agitated than in the other.

[Illustration: _Painting in Fresco, in the Sepulchres of Thebes._

_Publish’d Dec^r. 1^{st}. 1789. by G. Robinson & Co._]

I went back to my first harp, verified, and examined my drawing in all

its parts; it is with great pleasure I now give a figure of this second

harp to the reader, it was mislaid among a multitude of other papers,

at the time when I was solicited to communicate the former drawing to

a gentleman then writing the History of Music, which he has already

submitted to the public; it is very lately and unexpectedly this last

harp has been found; I am only sorry this accident has deprived the

public of Dr Burney’s remarks upon it. I hope he will yet favour us

with them, and therefore abstain from anticipating his reflections, as

I consider this as his province; I never knew any one so capable of

affording the public, new, and at the same time just lights on this

subject.

There still remained a third harp of ten strings, its precise form I do

not well remember, for I had seen it but once when I first entered the

cave, and was now preparing to copy that likewise. I do not recollect

that there was any man playing upon this one, I think it was rather

resting upon a wall, with some kind of drapery upon one end of it,

and was the smallest of the three. But I am not at all so certain of

particulars concerning this, as to venture any description of it; what

I have said of the other two may be absolutely depended upon.

I look upon these harps then as the Theban harps in use in the time of

Sesostris, who did not rebuild, but decorate ancient Thebes; I consider

them as affording an incontestible proof, were they the only monuments

remaining, that every art necessary to the construction, ornament, and

use of this instrument, was in the highest perfection, and if so, all

the others must have probably attained to the same degree.

We see in particular the ancients then possessed an art relative to

architecture, that of hewing the hardest stones with the greatest ease,

of which we are at this day utterly ignorant and incapable. We have

no instrument that could do it, no composition that could make tools

of temper sufficient to cut bass reliefs in granite or porphyry so

readily; and our ignorance in this is the more completely shewn, in

that we have all the reasons to believe, the cutting instrument with

which they did these surprising feats was composed of brass; a metal of

which, after a thousand experiments, no tool has ever been made that

could serve the purpose of a common knife, though we are at the same

time certain, it was of brass the ancients made their razors.

These harps, in my opinion, overturn all the accounts hitherto given of

the earliest state of music and musical instruments in the east; and

are altogether in their form, ornaments, and compass, an incontestible

proof, stronger than a thousand Greek quotations, that geometry,

drawing, mechanics, and music, were at the greatest perfection when

this instrument was made, and that the period from which we date the

invention of these arts, was only the beginning of the æra of their

restoration. This was the sentiment of Solomon, a writer who lived at

the time when this harp was painted. “Is there (says Solomon) any thing

whereof it may be said, See, this is new! it hath been already of old

time which was before us[123].”

We find, in these very countries, how a later calamity, of the same

public nature, the conquest of the Saracens, occasioned a similar

downfal of literature, by the burning the Alexandrian library under the

fanatical caliph Omar. We see how soon after, they flourished, planted

by the same hands that before had rooted them out.

The effects of a revolution occasioned, at the period I am now

speaking of, by the universal inundation of the _Shepherds_, were

the destruction of Thebes, the ruin of architecture, and the downfal

of astronomy in Egypt. Still a remnant was left in the colonies and

correspondents of Thebes, though fallen. Ezekiel[124] celebrates Tyre

as being, from her beginning, famous for the tabret and harp, and it

is probably to Tyre the taste for music fled from the contempt and

persecution of the barbarous Shepherds; who, though a numerous nation,

to this day never have yet possessed any species of music, or any kind

of musical instruments capable of improvement.

Although it is a curious subject for reflection, it should not surprise

us to find here the harp, in such variety of form. Old Thebes, as we

presently shall see, had been destroyed, and was soon after decorated

and adorned, but not rebuilt by Sesostris. It was some time between the

reign of Menes, the first king of the Thebaid, and the first general

war of the Shepherds, that these decorations and paintings were made.

This gives it a prodigious antiquity; but supposing it was a favourite

instrument, consequently well understood at the building of Tyre[125]

in the year 1320 before Christ, and Sesostris had lived in the time of

Solomon, as Sir Isaac Newton imagines; still there were 320 years since

that instrument had already attained to great perfection, a sufficient

time to have varied it into every form.

Upon seeing the preparations I was making to proceed farther in my

researches, my conductors lost all sort of subordination. They were

afraid my intention was to sit in this cave all night, (as it really

was,) and to visit the others next morning. With great clamour and

marks of discontent, they dashed their torches against the largest

harp, and made the best of their way out of the cave, leaving me and my

people in the dark; and all the way as they went, they made dreadful

denunciations of tragical events that were immediately to follow, upon

their departure from the cave.

There was no possibility of doing more. I offered them money,

much beyond the utmost of their expectations; but the fear of the

Troglodytes, above Medinet Tabu, had fallen upon them; and seeing at

last this was real, I was not myself without apprehensions, for they

were banditti, and outlaws, and no reparation was to be expected,

whatever they should do to hurt us.

Very much vexed, I mounted my horse to return to the boat. The road

lay through a very narrow valley, the sides of which were covered with

bare loose stones. I had no sooner got down to the bottom, than I heard

a great deal of loud speaking on both sides of the valley; and, in an

instant, a number of large stones were rolled down upon me, which,

though I heard in motion, I could not see, on account of the darkness;

this increased my terror.

Finding, by the impatience of the horse, that several of these stones

had come near him, and that it probably was the noise of his feet which

guided those that threw them, I dismounted, and ordered the Moor to get

on horseback; which he did, and in a moment galloped out of danger.

This, if I had been wise, I certainly might have done before him, but

my mind was occupied by the paintings. Nevertheless, I was resolved

upon revenge before leaving these banditti, and listened till I heard

voices, on the right side of the hill. I accordingly levelled my gun

as near as possible, by the ear, and fired one barrel among them. A

moment’s silence ensued, and then a loud howl, which seemed to have

come from thirty or forty persons. I took my servant’s blunderbuss,

and discharged it where I heard the howl, and a violent confusion of

tongues followed, but no more stones. As I found this was the time to

escape, I kept along the dark side of the hill, as expeditiously as

possible, till I came to the mouth of the plain, when we reloaded our

firelocks, expecting some interruption before we reached the boat; and

then we made the best of our way to the river.

We found our Rais full of fears for us. He had been told, that, as soon

as day light should appear, the whole Troglodytes were to come down to

the river, in order to plunder and destroy our boat.

This night expedition at the mountains was but partial, the general

attack was reserved for next day. Upon holding council, we were

unanimous in opinion, as indeed we had been during the whole course

of this voyage. We thought, since our enemy had left us to-night, it

would be our fault if they found us in the morning. Therefore, without

noise, we cast off our rope that fastened us, and let ourselves over to

the other side. About twelve at night a gentle breeze began to blow,

which wafted us up to Luxor, where there was a governor, for whom I had

letters.

From being convinced by the sight of Thebes, which had not the

appearance of ever having had walls, that the fable of the hundred

gates, mentioned by Homer, was mere invention, I was led to conjecture

what could be the origin of that fable.

That the old inhabitants of Thebes lived in caves in the mountains, is,

I think, without doubt, and that the hundred mountains I have spoken

of, excavated, and adorned, were the greatest wonders at that time,

seems equally probable. Now, the name of these to this day is Beeban el

Meluke, the ports or gates of the kings, and hence, perhaps, come the

hundred gates of Thebes upon which the Greeks have dwelt so much. Homer

never saw Thebes, it was demolished before the days of any profane

writer, either in prose or verse. What he added to its history must

have been from imagination.

All that is said of Thebes, by poets or historians, after the days of

Homer, is meant of Diospolis; which was built by the Greeks long after

Thebes was destroyed, as its name testifies; though Diodorus[126] says

it was built by Busiris. It was on the east side of the Nile, whereas

ancient Thebes was on the west, though both are considered as one city;

and [127]Strabo says, that the river[128] runs through the middle of

Thebes, by which he means between old Thebes and Diospolis, or Luxor

and Medinet Tabu.

While in the boat, I could not help regretting the time I had spent

in the morning, in looking for the place in the narrow valley where

the mark of the famous golden circle was visible, which Norden says he

saw, but I could discern no traces of it any where, and indeed it does

not follow that the mark left was that of a circle. This magnificent

instrument was probably fixed perpendicular to the horizon in the plane

of the meridian; so that the appearance of the place where it stood,

would very probably not partake of the circular form at all, or any

precise shape whereby to know it. Besides, as I have before said, it

was not among these tombs or excavated mountains, but ten stades from

them, so the vestiges of this famous instrument[129] could not be found

here. Indeed, being omitted in the latest edition of Norden, it would

seem that traveller himself was not perfectly well allured of its

existence.

We were well received by the governor of Luxor, who was also a believer

in judicial astrology. Having made him a small present, he furnished us

with provisions, and, among several other articles, some brown sugar;

and as we had seen limes and lemons in great perfection at Thebes, we

were resolved to refresh ourselves with some punch, in remembrance of

Old England. But, after what had happened the night before, none of our

people chose to run the risk of meeting the Troglodytes. We therefore

procured a servant of the governor’s of the town, to mount upon his

goat-skin filled with wind, and float down the stream from Luxor to El

Gournie, to bring us a supply of these, which he soon after did.

He informed us, that the people in the caves had, early in the morning,

made a descent upon the townsmen, with a view to plunder our boat; that

several of them had been wounded the night before, and they threatened

to pursue us to Syene. The servant did all he could to frighten them,

by saying that his master’s intention was to pass over with troops, and

exterminate them, as Osman Bey of Girgé had before done, and _we_ were

to assist him with our fire-arms.--After this we heard no more of them.

Luxor, and Carnac, which is a mile and a quarter below it, are by far

the largest and most magnificent scenes of ruins in Egypt, much more

extensive and stupendous than those of Thebes and Dendera put together.

There are two obelisks here of great beauty, and in good preservation,

they are less than those at Rome, but not at all mutilated. The

pavement, which is made to receive the shadow, is to this day so

horizontal, that it might still be used in observation. The top of the

obelisk is semicircular, an experiment, I suppose, made at the instance

of the observer, by varying the shape of the point of the obelisk, to

get rid of the penumbra.

At Carnac we saw the remains of two vast rows of sphinxes, one on the

right-hand, the other on the left, (their heads were mostly broken)

and, a little lower, a number of termini as it should seem. They were

composed of basaltes, with a dog or lion’s head, of Egyptian sculpture.

They stood in lines likewise, as if to conduct or serve as an avenue to

some principal building.

They had been covered with earth, till very lately a [130]Venetian

physician and antiquary bought one of them at a very considerable

price, as he said, for the king of Sardinia. This has caused several

others to be uncovered, though no purchaser hath yet offered.

Upon the outside of the walls at Carnac and Luxor there seems to be an

historical engraving instead of hieroglyphics; this we had not met with

before. It is a representation of men, horses, chariots, and battles;

some of the attitudes are freely and well drawn, they are rudely

scratched upon the surface of the stone, as some of the hieroglyphics

at Thebes are. The weapons the men make use of are short javelins, such

as are common at this day among the inhabitants of Egypt, only they

have feathered wings like arrows. There is also distinguished among the

rest, the figure of a man on horseback, with a lion fighting furiously

by him, and Diodorus[131] says, Osimandyas was so represented at

Thebes. This whole composition merits great attention.

I have said, that Luxor is Diospolis, and should think, that that

place, and Carnac together, made the Jovis Civitas Magna of Ptolemy,

though there is 9´ difference of the latitude by my observation

compared with his. But as mine was made on the south of Luxor, if

his was made on the north of Carnac, the difference will be greatly

diminished.

The 17th we took leave of our friendly Shekh of Luxor, and sailed with

a very fair wind, and in great spirits. The liberality of the Shekh of

Luxor had extended as far as even to my Rais, whom he engaged to land

me here upon my return.--I had procured him considerable ease in some

complaints he had; and he saw our departure with as much regret as in

other places they commonly did our arrival.

On the eastern shore are Hambdé, Maschergarona, Tot, Senimi, and

Gibeg. Mr Norden seems to have very much confused the places in this

neighbourhood, as he puts Erment opposite to Carnac, and Thebes farther

south than Erment, and on the east side of the Nile, whilst he places

Luxor farther south than Erment. But Erment is fourteen miles farther

south than Thebes, and Luxor about a quarter of a mile (as I have

already said) farther south on the East side of the river, whereas

Thebes is on the West.

He has fixed a village (which he calls [132]Demegeit) in the situation

where Thebes stands, and he calls it Crocodilopolis, from what

authority I know not; but the whole geography is here exceedingly

confused, and out of its proper position.

In the evening we came to an anchor on the eastern shore nearly

opposite to Esné. Some of our people had landed to shoot, trusting to

a turn of the river that is here, which would enable them to keep up

with us; but they did not arrive till the sun was setting, loaded with

hares, pigeons, gootos, all very bad game. I had, on my part, staid on

board, and had shot two geese, as bad eating as the others, but very

beautiful in their plumage.

We passed over to Esné next morning. It is the ancient Latopolis, and

has very great remains, particularly a large temple, which, though the

whole of it is of the remotest antiquity, seems to have been built

at different times, or rather out of the ruins of different ancient

buildings. The hieroglyphics upon this are very ill executed, and

are not painted. The town is the residence of an Arab Shekh, and the

inhabitants are a very greedy, bad sort of people; but as I was dressed

like an Arab, they did not molest, because they did not know me.

The 18th, we left Esné, and passed the town of Edfu, where there is

likewise considerable remains of Egyptian architecture. It is the

Appollinis Civitas Magna.

The wind failing, we were obliged to stop in a very poor, desolate, and

dangerous part of the Nile, called Jibbel el Silselly, where a boom,

or chain, was drawn across the river, to hinder, as is supposed, the

Nubian boats from committing piratical practices in Egypt lower down

the stream. The stones on both sides, to which the chain was fixed,

are very visible; but I imagine that it was for fiscal rather than for

warlike purposes, for Syene being garrisoned, there is no possibility

of boats passing from Nubia by that city into Egypt. There is indeed

another purpose to which it might be designed; to prevent war upon the

Nile between any two states.

We know from Juvenal[133], who lived some time at Syene, that there was

a tribe in that neighbourhood called Ombi, who had violent contentions

with the people of Dendera about the crocodile; it is remarkable these

two parties were Anthropophagi so late as Juvenal’s time, yet no

historian speaks of this extraordinary fact, which cannot be called in

question, as he was an eye-witness and resided at Syene.

Now these two nations who were at war had above a hundred miles of

neutral territory between them, and therefore they could never meet

except on the Nile. But either one or the other possessing this chain,

could hinder his adversary from coming nearer him. As the chain is in

the hermonthic nome, as well as the capital of the Ombi, I suppose this

chain to be the barrier of this last state, to hinder those of Dendera

from coming up the river _to eat_ them.

About noon we passed Coom Ombo, a round building like a castle, where

is supposed to have been the metropolis of Ombi, the people last spoken

of. We then arrived at Daroo[134], a miserable mansion, unconscious

that, some years after, we were to be indebted to that paltry village

for the man who was to guide us through the desert, and restore us to

our native country and our friends.

We next came to Shekh Ammer, the encampment of the Arabs [135]Ababdé,

I suppose the same that Mr Norden calls Ababuda, who reach from near

Cosseir far into the desert. As I had been acquainted with one of them

at Badjoura, who desired medicines for his father, I promised to call

upon him, and see their effect, when I should pass Shekh Ammer, which

I now accordingly did; and by the reception I met with, I found they

did not expect I would ever have been as good as my word. Indeed they

would probably have been in the right, but as I was about to engage

myself in extensive deserts, and this was a very considerable nation in

these tracts, I thought it was worth my while to put myself under their

protection.

Shekh Ammer is not one, but a collection of villages, composed of

miserable huts, containing, at this time, about a thousand effective

men: they possess few horse, and are mostly mounted on camels. These

were friends to Shekh Hamam, governor of Upper Egypt for the time,

and consequently to the Turkish government at Syene, as also to the

janissaries there at Deir and Ibrim. They were the barrier, or bulwark,

against the prodigious number of Arabs, the Bishareen[136], and others,

depending upon the kingdom of Sennaar.

Ibrahim, the son, who had seen me at Furshout and Badjoura, knew me as

soon as I arrived, and, after acquainting his father, came with about

a dozen of naked attendants, with lances in their hands to escort me.

I was scarce got into the door of the tent, before a great dinner

was brought after their custom; and, that being dispatched, it was a

thousand times repeated, how little they expected that I would have

thought or inquired about them.

We were introduced to their Shekh, who was sick, in a corner of a hut,

where he lay upon a carpet, with a cushion under his head. This chief

of the Ababdé, called Nimmer, _i. e. the Tiger_ (though his furious

qualities were at this time in great measure allayed by sickness) asked

me much about the state of Lower Egypt. I satisfied him as far as

possible, but recommended to him to confine his thoughts nearer home,

and not to be over anxious about these distant countries, as he himself

seemed, at that time, to be in a declining state of health.