BACK THROUGH NUBIA.
There are fourteen temples between Abou Simbel and Philæ; to say nothing
of grottoes, tombs and other ruins. As a rule, people begin to get tired
of temples about this time and vote them too plentiful. Meek travelers
go through them as a duty; but the greater number rebel. Our happy
couple, I grieve to say, went over to the majority. Dead to shame, they
openly proclaimed themselves bored. They even skipped several temples.
For myself, I was never bored by them. Though they had been twice as
many, I should not have wished them fewer. Miss Martineau tells how, in
this part of the river, she was scarcely satisfied to sit down to
breakfast without having first explored a temple; but I could have
breakfasted, dined, supped on temples. My appetite for them was
insatiable and grew with what it fed upon. I went over them all. I took
notes of them all. I sketched them every one.
I may as well say at once that I shall reproduce but few of those notes
and only some of those sketches in the present volume. If, surrounded by
their local associations, these ruins fail to interest many who travel
far to see them, it is not to be supposed that they would interest
readers at home. Here and there, perhaps, might be one who would care to
pore with me over every broken sculpture; to spell out every
half-legible cartouche; to trace through Greek and Roman influences
(which are nowhere more conspicuous than in these Nubian buildings) the
slow deterioration of the Egyptian style. But the world for the most
part reserves itself, and rightly, for the great epochs and the great
names of the past; and because it has not yet had too much of Karnak, of
Abou Simbel, of the pyramids, it sets slight store by those minor
monuments which record the periods of foreign rule and the decline of
native art. For these reasons, therefore, I propose to dismiss very
briefly many places upon which I bestowed hours of delightful labor.
We left Abou Simbel just as the moon was rising on the evening of the
18th of February, and dropped down with the current for three or four
miles before mooring for the night. At six next morning the men began
rowing; and at half-past eight the heads of the colossi were still
looking placidly after us across a ridge of intervening hills. They were
then more than five miles distant in a direct line; but every feature
was still distinct in the early daylight. One went up again and again,
as long as they remained in sight, and bade good-by to them at last with
that same heartache which comes of a farewell view of the Alps.
When I say that we were seventeen days getting from Abou Simbel to
Philæ, and that we had the wind against us from sunrise till sunset
almost every day, it will be seen that our progress was of the slowest.
To those who were tired of temples, and to the crew who were running
short of bread, these long days of lying up under the bank, or of
rocking to and fro in the middle of the river, were dreary enough.
Slowly but surely, however, the hard-won miles go by. Sometimes the
barren desert hems us in to right and left, with never a blade of green
between the rock and the river. Sometimes, as at Tosko,[153] we come
upon an open tract, where there are palms and castor-berry plantations
and corn-fields alive with quail. The idle man goes ashore at Tosko with
his gun, while the little lady and the writer climb a solitary rock
about two hundred feet above the river. The bank shelves here, and a
crescent-like wave of inundation, about three miles in length, overflows
it every season. From this height one sees exactly how far the wave
goes, and how it must make a little bay when it is there. Now it is a
bay of barley, full to the brim, and rippling to the breeze. Beyond the
green comes the desert; the one defined against the other as sharply as
water against land. The desert looks wonderfully old beside the young
green of the corn, and the Nile flows wide among sand-banks, like a
tidal river near the sea. The village, squared off in parallelograms
like a cattle market, lies mapped out below. A field-glass shows that
the houses are simply cloistered court-yards roofed with palm-thatch;
the sheik’s house being larger than the rest, with the usual open space
and spreading sycamore in front. There are women moving to and fro in
the court-yards, and husbandmen in the castor-berry patches. A funeral
with a train of wailers goes out presently toward the burial-ground on
the edge of the desert. The idle man, a slight figure with a veil
twisted round his hat, wades, half-hidden, through the barley, signaling
his whereabouts every now and then by a puff of white smoke. A
cargo-boat, stripped and shorn, comes floating down the river, making no
visible progress. A native felucca, carrying one tattered brown sail,
goes swiftly up with the wind at a pace that will bring her to Abou
Simbel before nightfall. Already she is past the village; and those
black specks yonder, which we had never dreamed were crocodiles, have
slipped off into the water at her approach. And now she is far in the
distance--that glowing, illimitable distance--traversed by long silvery
reaches of river, and ending in a vast flat, so blue and aerial that,
but for some three or four notches of purple peaks on the horizon, one
could scarcely discern the point at which land and sky melt into each
other. Ibrim comes next; then Derr; then Wady Sabooyah. At Ibrim, as at
Derr, there are “fair” families, whose hideous light hair and blue eyes
(grafted on brown-black skins) date back to Bosnian forefathers of three
hundred and sixty years ago. These people give themselves airs, and are
the _haute noblesse_ of the place. The men are lazy and quarrelsome. The
women trail longer robes, wear more beads and rings, and are altogether
more unattractive and castor-oily than any we have seen elsewhere. They
keep slaves, too. We saw these unfortunates trotting at the heels of
their mistresses, like dogs. Knowing slavery to be officially illegal in
the dominions of the khedive, the M. B.’s applied to a dealer, who
offered them an Abyssinian girl for ten pounds. This useful
article--warranted a bargain--was to sweep, wash, milk, and churn; but
was not equal to cooking. The M. B.’s, it is needless to add, having
verified the facts, retired from the transaction.
At Derr we pay a farewell visit to the temple; and at Amada, arriving
toward close of day, see the great view for the last time in the glory
of sunset.
And now, though the north wind blows persistently, it gets hotter every
day. The crocodiles like it, and come out to bask in the sunshine.
Called up one morning in the middle of breakfast we see two--a little
one and a big one--on a sand-bank near by. The men rest upon their oars.
The boat goes with the stream. No one speaks; no one moves. Breathlessly
and in dead silence, we drift on till we are close beside them. The big
one is rough and black, like the trunk of a London elm, and measures
full eighteen feet in length. The little one is pale and greenish and
glistens like glass. All at once the old one starts, doubles itself up
for a spring, and disappears with a tremendous splash. But the little
one, apparently unconscious of danger, lifts its tortoise-like head and
eyes us sidewise. Presently some one whispers; and that whisper breaks
the spell. Our little crocodile flings up its tail, plunges clown the
bank, and is gone in a moment.
The crew could not understand how the idle man, after lying in wait for
crocodiles at Abou Simbel, should let this rare chance pass without a
shot. But we had heard since then of so much indiscriminate slaughter at
the second cataract, that he was resolved to bear no part in the
extermination of those old historic reptiles. That a sportsman should
wish for a single trophy is not unreasonable; but that scores of crack
shots should go up every winter killing and wounding these wretched
brutes at an average rate of from twelve to eighteen per gun, is mere
butchery and cannot be too strongly reprehended. Year by year, the
creatures become shyer and fewer; and the day is probably not far
distant when a crocodile will be as rarely seen below Semneh as it is
now rarely seen below Assûan.
The thermometer stands at 85° in the saloon of the Philæ, when we come
one afternoon to Wady Sabooah, where there is a solitary temple drowned
in sand. It was approached once by an avenue of sphinxes and standing
colossi, now shattered and buried. The roof of the pronaos, if ever it
was roofed, is gone. The inner halls and the sanctuary--all excavated in
the rock--are choked and impassable. Only the propylon stands clear of
sand; and that, massive as it is, looks as if one touch of a
battering-ram would bring it to the ground. Every huge stone in it is
loose, Every block in the cornice seems tottering in its place. In all
this we fancy we recognize the work of our Abou Simbel earthquake.[154]
At Wady Sabooah we see a fat native. The fact claims record, because it
is so uncommon. A stalwart, middle-aged man, dressed in a tattered kilt
and carrying a palm-staff in his hand, he stands before us the living
double of the famous wooden statue at Boulak. He is followed by his two
wives and three or four children, all bent upon trade. The women have
trinkets, the boys a live chameleon and a small stuffed crocodile for
sale. While the painter is bargaining for the crocodile and L---- for a
nose-ring, the writer makes acquaintance with a pair of self-important
hoopoes, who live in the pylon and evidently regard it as a big nest of
their own building. They sit observing me curiously while I sketch,
nodding their crested polls and chattering disparagingly, like a couple
of critics. By and by comes a small black bird with a white breast and
sings deliciously. It is like no little bird that I have ever seen
before; but the song that it pours so lavishly from its tiny throat is
as sweet and brilliant as a canary’s.
Powerless against the wind, the dahabeeyah lies idle day after day in
the sun. Sometimes, when we chance to be near a village, the natives
squat on the bank and stare at us for hours together. The moment any one
appears on deck they burst into a chorus of “Backshîsh!” There is but
one way to get rid of them, and that is to sketch them. The effect is
instantaneous. With a good-sized block and a pencil, a whole village may
be put to flight at a moment’s notice. If, on the other hand, one wishes
for a model, the difficulty is insuperable. The painter tried in vain to
get some of the women and girls (not a few of whom were really pretty)
to sit for their portraits. I well remember one haughty beauty, shaped
and draped like a Juno, who stood on the bank one morning, scornfully
watching all that was done on deck. She carried a flat basket
back-handed; and her arms were covered with bracelets and her fingers
with rings. Her little girl, in a Madame Nubia fringe, clung to her
skirts, half-wondering, half-frightened. The painter sent out an
ambassador plenipotentiary to offer her anything from a sixpence to half
a sovereign if she would only stand like that for half an hour. The
manner of her refusal was grand. She drew her shawl over her face, took
her child’s hand, and stalked away like an offended goddess. The writer,
meanwhile, hidden behind a curtain, had snatched a tiny sketch from the
cabin-window.
On the western bank, somewhere between Wady Sabooah and Maharrakeh, in a
spot quite bare of vegetation, stand the ruins of a fortified town which
is neither mentioned by Murray nor entered in the maps. It is built on a
base of reddish rock and commands the river and the desert. The painter
and writer, explored it one afternoon, in the course of a long ramble.
Climbing first a steep slope strewn with masonry, we came to the remains
of a stone gateway. Finding this impassable, we made our way through a
breach in the battlemented wall, and thence up a narrow road down which
had been poured a cataract of débris. Skirting a ruined postern at the
top of this road, we found ourselves in a close labyrinth of vaulted
arcades built of crude brick and lit at short intervals by openings in
the roof. These strange streets--for they were streets--were lined on
either side by small dwellings built of crude brick on stone
foundations. We went into some of the houses--mere ruined courts and
roofless chambers, in which were no indications of hearths or
staircases. In one lay a fragment of stone column about fourteen inches
in diameter. The air in these ancient streets was foul and stagnant and
the ground was everywhere heaped with fragments of black, red and
yellowish pottery, like the shards of Elephantine and Philæ. A more
desolate place in a more desolate situation I never saw. It looked as if
it had been besieged, sacked and abandoned, a thousand years ago; which
is probably under the mark, for the character of the pottery would seem
to point to the period of Roman occupation. Noting how the brick
super-structures were reared on apparently earlier masonry, we concluded
that the beginnings of this place were probably Egyptian and the later
work Roman. The marvel was that any town should have been built in so
barren a spot, there being not so much as an inch-wide border of lentils
for a mile or more between the river and the desert.
Having traversed the place from end to end, we came out through another
breach on the westward side, and, thinking to find a sketchable point of
view inland, struck down toward the plain. In order to reach this, one
first must skirt a deep ravine which divides the rock of the citadel
from the desert. Following the brink of this ravine to the point at
which it falls into the level, we found to our great surprise that we
were treading the banks of an extinct river.
It was full of sand now; but beyond all question it had once been full
of water. It came, evidently, from the mountains over toward the
northwest. We could trace its windings for a long way across the plain,
thence through the ravine and on southward in a line parallel with the
Nile. Here, beneath our feet, were the water-worn rocks through which it
had fretted its way; and yonder, half-buried in sand, were the bowlders
it had rounded and polished and borne along in its course. I doubt,
however, if when it was a river of water this stream was half as
beautiful as now, when it is a river of sand. It was turbid then, no
doubt, and charged with sediment. Now it is more golden than Pactolus
and covered with ripples more playful and undulating than were ever
modeled by Canaletti’s pencil.
Supposing yonder town to have been founded in the days when the river
was a river and the plain fertile and well watered, the mystery of its
position is explained. It was protected in front by the Nile and in the
rear by the ravine and the river. But how long ago was this? Here,
apparently, was an independent stream, taking its rise among the Libyan
mountains. It dated back, consequently, to a time when those barren
hills collected and distributed water--that is to say, to a time when it
used to rain in Nubia. And that time must have been before the rocky
barrier broke down at Silsilis, in the old days when the land of Kush
flowed with milk and honey.[155]
It would rain even now in Nubia, if it could. That same evening, when
the sun was setting, we saw a fan-like drift of dappled cloud miles high
above our heads, melting, as it seemed, in fringes of iridescent vapor.
We could distinctly see those fringes forming, wavering and evaporating;
unable to descend as rain, because dispersed at a high altitude by
radiated heat from the desert. This, with one exception, was the only
occasion on which I saw clouds in Nubia.
Coming back, we met a solitary native, with a string of beads in his
hand and a knife up his sleeve. He followed us for a long way,
volunteering a but half-intelligible story about some unknown
birbeh[156] in the desert. We asked where it was and he pointed up the
course of our unknown river.
“You have seen it?” said the painter.
“Marrat ketîr” (“many times”).
“How far is it?”
“One day’s march in the hagar” (“desert”).
“And have no Ingleezeh ever been to look for it?”
He shook his head at first, not understanding the question; then looked
grave and held up one finger.
Our stock of Arabic was so small and his so interlarded with Kensee,
that we had great difficulty in making out what he said next. We
gathered, however, that some howadji, traveling alone and on foot, had
once gone in search of this birbeh and never come back. Was he lost? Was
he killed? Who could say?
“It was a long time ago,” said the man with the beads. “It was a long
time ago and he took no guide with him.”
We would have given much to trace the river to its source and search for
this unknown temple in the desert. But it is one of the misfortunes of
this kind of traveling that one cannot easily turn aside from the beaten
track. The hot season is approaching; the river is running low; the
daily cost of the dahabeeyah is exorbitant; and, in Nubia, where little
or nothing can be bought in the way of food, the dilatory traveler risks
starvation. It was something, however, to have seen with one’s own eyes
that the Nile, instead of flowing for a distance of twelve hundred
miles unfed by any affluent, had here received the waters of a
tributary.[157]
To those who have a south breeze behind them the temples must now follow
in quick succession. We, however, achieved them by degrees and rejoiced
when our helpless dahabeeyah lay within rowing reach of anything worth
seeing. Thus we pull down one day to Maharrakeh--in itself a dull ruin
but picturesquely desolate. Seen as one comes up the bank on landing,
two parallel rows of columns stand boldly up against the sky, supporting
a ruined entablature. In the foreground a few stunted Dôm palms starve
in an arid soil. The barren desert closes in the distance.
We are beset here by an insolent crowd of savage-looking men and boys
and impudent girls with long frizzy hair and Nubian fringes, who pester
us with beads and pebbles; dance, shout, slap their legs and clap their
hands in our faces; and pelt us when we go away. One ragged warrior
brandishes an antique brass-mounted firelock full six feet long in the
barrel; and some of the others carry slender spears.
The temple--a late Roman structure--would seem to have been wrecked by
an earthquake before it was completed. The masonry is all in the
rough--pillars as they came from the quarry; capitals blocked out,
waiting for the carver. These unfinished ruins--of which every stone
looks new, as if the work was still in progress--affect one’s
imagination strangely. On a fallen wall south of the portico[158] the
idle man detected some remains of a Greek inscription; but for
hieroglyphic characters or cartouches, by which to date the building, we
looked in vain.[159]
Dakkeh comes next in order; then Gerf Hossayn, Dendoor and Kalebsheh.
Arriving at Dakkeh soon after sunrise we find the whole
population--screaming, pushing, chattering, laden with eggs, pigeons and
gourds for sale--drawn up to receive us. There is a large sand island in
the way here, so we moor about a mile above the temple.
We first saw the twin pylons of Dakkeh some weeks ago from the deck of
the Philæ and we then likened them to the majestic towers of Edfu.
Approaching them now by land, we are surprised to find them so small. It
is a brilliant, hot morning; and our way lies by the river, between the
lentil-slope and the castor-berry patches. There are flocks of pigeons
flying low overhead; barking dogs and crowing cocks in the village close
by; and all over the path hundreds of beetles--real live scarabs, black
as coal and busy as ants--rolling their clay pellets up from the water’s
edge to the desert. If we were to examine a score or so of these pellets
we should here and there find one that contained no eggs; for it is a
curious fact that the scarab-beetle makes and rolls her pellets, whether
she has an egg to deposit or not. The female beetle, though assisted by
the male, is said to do the heavier share of the pellet-rolling; and if
evening comes on before her pellet is safely stowed away, she will
sleep, holding it with her feet all night, and resume her labor in the
morning.[160]
The temple here--begun by an Ethiopian king named Arkaman (Ergamenes)
about whom Diodorus has a long story to tell, and carried on by the
Ptolemies and Cæsars--stands in a desolate open space to the north of
the village, and is approached by an avenue, the walls of which are
constructed with blocks from some earlier building. The whole of this
avenue and all the waste ground for three or four hundred yards round
about the temple is not merely strewn, but piled, with fragments of
pottery, pebbles and large, smooth stones of porphery, alabaster,
basalt, and a kind of marble like verde antico. These stones are
puzzling. They look as if they might be fragments of statues that had
been rolled and polished by ages of friction in the bed of a torrent.
Among the potsherds we find some inscribed fragments like those of
Elephantine.[161] Of the temple I will only say that, as masonry, it is
better put together than any work of the eighteenth or nineteenth
dynasties with which I am acquainted. The sculptures, however, are
atrocious. Such misshapen hieroglyphs; such dumpy, smirking goddesses;
such clownish kings in such preposterous head-dresses, we have never
seen till now. The whole thing, in short, as regards sculpturesque
style, is the Ptolemaic out-Ptolemied.
Rowing round presently to Kobban--the river running wide with the sand
island between--we land under the walls of a huge crude brick structure,
black with age, which at first sight looks quite shapeless; but which
proves to be an ancient Egyptian fortress, buttressed, towered,
loop-holed, finished at the angles with the invariable molded torus, and
surrounded by a deep dry moat, which is probably yet filled each summer
by the inundation.
Now, of all rare things in the valley of the Nile, a purely secular ruin
is the rarest; and this, with the exception of some foundations of
dwellings here and there, is the first we have seen. It is probably
very, very old; as old as the days of Thothmes III, whose name is found
on some scattered blocks about a quarter of a mile away, and who built
two similar fortresses at Semneh, thirty-five miles above Wady Halfeh.
It may be even a thousand years older still, and date from the time of
Amenemhat III, whose name is also found on a stela near Kobban.[162] For
here was once an ancient city, when Pselcis (now Dakkeh) was but a new
suburb on the opposite bank. The name of this ancient city is lost, but
it is by some supposed to be identical with the Metachompso of
Ptolemy.[163] As the suburb grew the mother town declined, and in time
the suburb became the city and the city became the suburb. The scattered
blocks aforesaid, together with the remains of a small temple, yet mark
the position of the elder city.
The walls of this most curious and interesting fortress have probably
lost much of their original height. They are in some parts thirty feet
thick, and nowhere less than twenty. Vertical on the inside, they are
built at a buttress-slope outside, with additional shallow buttresses at
regular distances. These last, as they can scarcely add to the enormous
strength of the original wall, were probably designed for effect. There
are two entrances to the fortress; one in the center of the north wall,
and one in the south. We enter the inclosure by the last named, and find
ourselves in the midst of an immense parallelogram measuring about four
hundred and fifty feet from east to west, and perhaps three hundred feet
from north to south.
All within these bounds is a wilderness of ruin. The space looks large
enough for a city, and contains what might be the débris of a dozen
cities. We climb huge mounds of rubbish; skirt cataracts of broken
pottery; and stand on the brink of excavated pits honeycombed forty feet
below, with brick foundations. Over these mounds and at the bottom of
these pits swarm men, women, and children, filling and carrying away
basket-loads of rubble. The dust rises in clouds. The noise, the heat,
the confusion, are indescribable. One pauses, bewildered, seeking in
vain to discover in this mighty maze any indication of a plan. It is
only by an effort that one gradually realizes how the place is but a
vast shell, and how all these mounds and pits mark the site of what was
once a huge edifice rising tower above tower to a central keep, such as
we see represented in the battle-subjects of Abou Simbel and Thebes.
That towered edifice and central keep--quarried, broken up, carried away
piecemeal, reduced to powder, and spread over the land as manure--has
now disappeared almost to its foundations. Only the well in the middle
of the inclosure, and the great wall of circuit remain. That wall is
doomed, and will by and by share the fate of the rest. The well, which
must have been very deep, is choked with rubbish to the brim. Meanwhile,
in order to realize what the place in its present condition is like, one
need but imagine how the Tower of London would look if the whole of the
inner buildings--white tower, chapel, armory, governor’s quarters, and
all--were leveled in shapeless ruin, and only the outer walls and moat
were left.
Built up against the inner side of the wall of circuit are the remains
of a series of massive towers, the tops of which, as they are, strangely
enough, shorter than the external structure, can never have communicated
with the battlements, unless by ladders. The finest of these towers,
together with a magnificent fragment of wall, faces the eastern desert.
Going out by the north entrance, we find the sides of the gateway, and
even the steps leading down into the moat, in perfect preservation;
while at the base of the great wall, on the outer side facing the river,
there yet remains a channel or conduit about two feet square, built and
roofed with stone, which in Murray is described as a water-gate.
The sun is high, the heat is overwhelming, the felucca waits; and we
turn reluctantly away, knowing that between here and Cairo we shall see
no more curious relics of the far-off past than this dismantled
stronghold. It is a mere mountain of unburned brick; altogether
unlovely: admirable only for the gigantic strength of its proportions;
pathetic only in the abjectness of its ruin. Yet it brings the lost ages
home to one’s imagination in a way that no temple could ever bring them.
It dispels for a moment the historic glamor of the sculptures, and
compels us to remember those nameless and forgotten millions, of whom
their rulers fashioned soldiers in time of war and builders in time of
peace.
Our adventures by the way are few and far between; and we now rarely
meet a dahabeeyah. Birds are more plentiful than when we were in this
part of the river a few weeks ago. We see immense flights of black and
white cranes congregated at night on the sand-banks; and any number of
quail may be had for the shooting. It is matter for rejoicing when the
idle man goes out with his gun and brings home a full bag; for our last
sheep was killed before we started for Wady Halfeh, and our last poultry
ceased cackling at Abou Simbel.
One morning early, we see a bride taken across the river in a big boat
full of women and girls, who are clapping their hands and shrilling the
tremulous zagharett. The bride--a chocolate beauty with magnificent
eyes--wears a gold brow-pendant and nose-ring, and has her hair newly
plaited in hundreds of tails, finished off at the ends with mud pellets
daubed with yellow ocher. She stands surrounded by her companions, proud
of her finery, and pleased to be stared at by the Ingleezeh.
About this time, also, we see one night a wild sort of festival going on
for some miles along both sides of the river. Watch-fires break out
toward twilight, first on this bank, then on that; becoming brighter and
more numerous as the darkness deepens. By and by, when we are going to
bed, we hear sounds of drumming on the eastern bank, and see from afar a
torchlight procession and dance. The effect of this dance of
torches--for it is only the torches that are visible--is quite diabolic.
The lights flit and leap as if they were alive; circling, clustering,
dispersing, bobbing, poussetting, pursuing each other at a gallop, and
whirling every now and then through the air, like rockets. Late as it
is, we would fain put ashore and see this orgy more nearly; but Reïs
Hassan shakes his head. The natives hereabout are said to be
quarrelsome; and if, as it is probable, they are celebrating the
festival of some local saint, we might be treated as intruders.
Coming at early morning to Gerf Hossayn, we make our way up to the
temple, which is excavated in the face of a limestone cliff, a couple of
hundred feet, perhaps, above the river. A steep path, glaring hot in the
sun, leads to a terrace in the rock; the temple being approached through
the ruins of a built-out portico and an avenue of battered colossi. It
is a gloomy place within--an inferior edition, so to say, of the Great
Temple of Abou Simbel; and of the same date. It consists of a first hall
supported by osiride pillars, a second and smaller hall with square
columns, a smoke-blackened sanctuary, and two side-chambers. The
osiride colossi, which stand twenty feet high without the entablature
over their heads or the pedestal under their feet, are thick-set,
bow-legged, and misshapen. Their faces would seem to have been painted
black originally; while those of the avenue outside have distinctly
Ethiopian features. One seems to detect here, as at Derr and Wady
Sabooah, the work of provincial sculptors; just as at Abou Simbel one
recognizes the master-style of the artists of the Theban Ramesseum.
The side-chambers at Gerf Hossayn are infested with bats. These bats are
the great sight of the place and have their appointed showman. We find
him waiting for us with an end of tarred rope, which he flings, blazing,
into the pitch-dark doorway. For a moment we see the whole ceiling hung,
as it were, with a close fringe of white, filmy-looking pendants. But it
is only for a moment. The next instant the creatures are all in motion,
dashing out madly in our faces like driven snowflakes. We picked up a
dead one afterward, when the rush was over, and examined it by the outer
daylight--a lovely little creature, white and downy, with fine
transparent wings and little pink feet and the prettiest mousey mouth
imaginable.
Bordered with dwarf palms, acacias and henna-bushes, the cliffs between
Gerf Hossayn and Dendoor stand out in detached masses so like ruins that
sometimes we can hardly believe they are rocks. At Dendoor, when the sun
is setting and a delicious gloom is stealing up the valley, we visit a
tiny temple on the western bank. It stands out above the river
surrounded by a wall of inclosure and consists of a single pylon, a
portico, two little chambers and a sanctuary. The whole thing is like an
exquisite toy, so covered with sculptures, so smooth, so new-looking, so
admirably built. Seeing them half by sunset, half by dusk, it matters
not that these delicately wrought bas-reliefs are of the decadence
school.[164] The rosy half-light of an Egyptian after-glow covers a
multitude of sins, and steeps the whole in an atmosphere of romance.
Wondering what has happened to the climate, we wake shivering next
morning an hour or so before break of day, and, for the first time in
several weeks, taste the old, early chill upon the air. When the sun
rises, we find ourselves at Kalabsheh, having passed the limit of the
tropic during the night. Henceforth, no matter how great the heat may be
by day, this chill invariably comes with the dark hour before dawn.
The usual yelling crowd, with the usual beads, baskets, eggs, and
pigeons, for sale, greets us on the shore at Kalabsheh. One of the men
has a fine old two-handed sword in a shabby blue velvet sheath, for
which he asks five napoleons. It looks as if it might have belonged to a
crusader. Some of the women bring buffalo-cream in filthy-looking black
skins slung round their waists like girdles. The cream is excellent; but
the skins temper one’s enjoyment of the unaccustomed dainty.
There is a magnificent temple here, and close by, excavated in the
cliff, a rock-cut speos, the local name of which is Bay-tel-Well. The
sculptures of this famous speos have been more frequently described and
engraved than almost any sculptures in Egypt. The procession of
Ethiopian tribute-bearers, the assault of the Amorite city, the triumph
of Rameses, are familiar not only to every reader of Wilkinson, but to
every visitor passing through the Egyptian rooms of the British Museum.
Notwithstanding the casts that have been taken from them, and the
ill-treatment to which they have been subjected by natives and visitors,
they are still beautiful. The colour of those in the roofless
court-yard, though so perfect when Bonomi executed his admirable
fac-similes, has now almost entirely peeled off; but in the portico and
inner chambers it is yet brilliant. An emerald-green Osiris, a crimson
Anubis, and an Isis of the brightest chrome yellow, are astonishingly
pure and forcibly in quality. As for the flesh-tones of the Anubis, this
was, I believe, the only instance I observed of a true crimson in Egypt
pigments.
Between the speos of Bayt-el-Welly and the neighboring temple of
Kalabsheh there lies about half a mile of hilly pathway and a gulf of
fourteen hundred years. Rameses ushers us into the presence of Augustus,
and we pass, as it were, from an oratory in the great house of Pharaoh
to the presence-chambers of the Cæsars.
But if the decorative work in the presence-chamber of the Cæsars was
anything like the decorative work in the temple of Kalabsheh, then the
taste thereof was of the vilest. Such a masquerade of deities; such
striped and spotted and cross-barred robes; such outrageous
head-dresses; such crude and violent coloring,[165] we have never seen
the like of. As for the goddesses, they are gaudier than the dancing
damsels of Luxur; while the kings balance on their heads diadems
compounded of horns, moons, birds, balls, beetles, lotus-blossoms, asps,
vases, and feathers. The temple, however, is conceived on a grand scale.
It is the Karnak of Nubia. But it is a Karnak that has evidently been
visited by a shock of earthquake far more severe than that which shook
the mighty pillars of the hypostyle hall and flung down the obelisk of
Hatasu. From the river it looks like a huge fortress; but, seen from the
threshold of the main gateway, it is a wilderness of ruin. Fallen
blocks, pillars, capitals, entablatures, lie so extravagantly piled that
there is not one spot in all those halls and courtyards upon which it is
possible to set one’s foot on the level of the original pavement. Here,
again, the earthquake seems to have come before the work was completed.
There are figures outlined on the walls, but never sculptured. Others
have been begun, but never finished. You can see where the chisel
stopped--you can even detect which was the last mark it made on the
surface. One traces here, in fact, the four processes of wall
decoration. In some places the space is squared off and ruled by the
mechanic; in others, the subject is ready drawn within those spaces by
the artist. Here the sculptor has carried it a stage farther; yonder the
painter has begun to color it.
More interesting, however, than aught else at Kalabsheh is the Greek
inscription of Silco of Ethiopia.[166] This inscription--made famous by
the commentaries of Niebuhr and Letronne--was discovered by M. Gau in
A.D. 1818. It consists of twenty-one lines very neatly written in red
ink, and it dates from the sixth century of the Christian era. It
commences thus:
I, Silco, puissant king of the Nubians and all the Ethiopians,
I came twice as far as Talmis[167] and Taphis.[168]
I fought against the Blemyes,[169] and God granted me the victory.
I vanquished them a second time; and the first time
I established myself completely with my troops.
I vanquished them, and they supplicated me.
I made peace with them; and they swore to me by their idols.
I trusted them; because they are a people of good faith.
Then I returned to my dominions in the Upper Country.
For I am a king.
Not only am I no follower in the train of other kings,
But I go before them.
As for those who seek strife against me,
I give them no peace in their homes till they entreat my pardon.
For I am a lion on the plains, and a goat upon the mountains.
Etc.
The historical value of this inscription is very great. It shows that in
the sixth century, while the native inhabitants of this part of the
valley of the Nile yet adhered to the ancient Egyptian faith, the
Ethiopians of the south were professedly Christian.
The descendants of the Blemmys are a fine race; tall, strong, and of a
rich chocolate complexion. Strolling through the village at sunset, we
see the entire population--old men sitting at their doors; young men
lounging and smoking; children at play. The women, with glittering white
teeth and liquid eyes, and a profusion of gold and silver ornaments on
neck and brow, come out with their little brown babies astride on hip or
shoulder, to stare as we go by. One sick old woman, lying outside her
hut on a palm-wood couch, raises herself for a moment on her elbow--then
sinks back with a weary sigh and turns her face to the wall. The mud
dwellings here are built in and out of a maze of massive stone
foundations, the remains of buildings once magnificent. Some of these
walls are built in concave courses; each course of stones, that is to
say, being depressed in the center and raised at the angles; which mode
of construction was adopted in order to offer less resistance when
shaken by earthquake.[170]
We observe more foundations built thus at Tafah, where we arrive next
morning. As the mason’s work at Tafah is of late Roman date, it follows
that earthquakes were yet frequent in Nubia at a period long subsequent
to the great shock of B.C. 27, mentioned by Eusebius. Travelers are too
ready to ascribe everything in the way of ruin to the fury of Cambyses
and the pious rage of the early Christians. Nothing, however, is easier
than to distinguish between the damage done to the monuments by the hand
of man and the damage caused by subterraneous upheaval. Mutilation is
the rule in the one case; displacement in the other. At Denderah, for
example, the injury done is wholly willful; at Abou Simbel it is wholly
accidental; at Karnak it is both willful and accidental. As for
Kalabsheh, it is clear that no such tremendous havoc could have been
effected by human means without the aid of powerful rams, fire, or
gunpowder; any of which must have left unmistakable traces.
At Tafah there are two little temples; one in picturesque ruin, one
quite perfect, and now used as a stable. There are also a number of
stone foundations, separate, quadrangular, subdivided into numerous
small chambers, and inclosed in boundary walls, some of which are built
in the concave courses just named. These sub-structions, of which the
painter counted eighteen, have long been the puzzle of travelers.[171]
Tafah is charmingly placed; and the seven miles which divide it from
Kalabsheh--once, no doubt, the scene of a cataract--are perhaps the most
picturesque on this side of Wady Halfeh. Rocky islets in the river;
palm groves, acacias, carobs, henna and castor-berry bushes and all
kinds of flowering shrubs, along the edges of the banks; fantastic
precipices riven and pinnacled, here rising abruptly from the water’s
edge and there from the sandy plain, make lovely sketches whichever way
one turns. There are gazelles, it is said, in the ravines behind Tafah;
and one of the natives--a truculent fellow in ragged shirt and dirty
white turban--tells how, at a distance of three hours up a certain glen,
there is another birbeh, larger than either of these, in the plain and a
great standing statue taller than three men. Here, then, if the tale be
true, is another ready-made discovery for whoever may care to undertake
it.
This same native, having sold a necklace to the idle man and gone away
content with his bargain, comes back by and by with half the village at
his heels, requiring double price. This modest demand being refused, he
rages up and down like a maniac; tears off his turban; goes through a
wild manual exercise with his spear; then sits down in stately silence,
with his friends and neighbors drawn up in a semicircle behind him.
This, it seems, is Nubian for a challenge. He has thrown down his
gantlet in form and demands trial by combat. The noisy crowd, meanwhile,
increases every moment. Reïs Hassan looks grave, fearing a possible
fracas; and the idle man, who is reading the morning service down below
(for it is on a Sunday morning) can scarcely be heard for the clamor
outside. In this emergency it occurs to the writer to send a message
ashore informing these gentlemen that the howadjis are holding mosque in
the dahabeeyah and entreating them to be quiet till the hour of prayer
is past. The effect of the message, strange to say, is instantaneous.
The angry voices are at once hushed. The challenger puts on his turban.
The assembled spectators squat in respectful silence on the bank. A
whole hour goes by thus, so giving the storm time to blow over; and when
the idle man reappears on deck his would-be adversary comes forward
quite pleasantly to discuss the purchase afresh.
It matters little how the affair ended; but I believe he was offered his
necklace back in exchange for the money paid and preferred to abide by
his bargain. It is as evidence of the sincerity of the religions
sentiment in the minds of a semi-savage people,[172] that I have thought
the incident worth telling.
We are now less than forty miles from Philæ; but the head wind is always
against us and the men’s bread is exhausted and there is no flour to be
bought in these Nubian villages. The poor fellows swept out the last
crumbs from the bottom of their bread-chest three or four days ago and
are now living on quarter-rations of lentil soup and a few dried dates
bought at Wady Halfeh. Patient and depressed, they crouch silently
beside their oars, or forget their hunger in sleep. For ourselves, it is
painful to witness their need and still more painful to be unable to
help them. Talhamy, whose own stores are at a low ebb, vows he can do
nothing. It would take his few remaining tins of preserved meat to feed
fifteen men for two days, and of flour he has barely enough for the
howadjis. Hungry? well, yes--no doubt they are hungry. But what of that?
They are Arabs; and Arabs bear hunger as camels bear thirst. It is
nothing new to them. They have often been hungry before--they will often
be hungry again. Enough! It is not for the ladies to trouble themselves
about such fellows as these!
Excellent advice, no doubt; but hard to follow. Not to be troubled and
not to do what little we can for the poor lads, is impossible. When that
little means laying violent hands upon Talhamy’s reserve of eggs and
biscuits and getting up lotteries for prizes of chocolate and tobacco,
that worthy evidently considers that we have taken leave of our wits.
Under a burning sky we touch for an hour or two at Gertássee and then
push on for Dabôd. The limestone quarries at Gertássee are full of
votive sculptures and inscriptions; and the little ruin--a mere cluster
of graceful columns supporting a fragment of cornice--stands high on the
brink of a cliff overhanging the river. Take it as you will, from above
or below, looking north or looking south, it makes a charming sketch.
If transported to Dabôd on that magic carpet of the fairy tale, one
would take it for a ruin on the “beached margent” of some placid lake in
dreamland. It lies between two bends of the river, which here flows
wide, showing no outlet and seeming to be girdled by mountains and
palm-groves. The temple is small and uninteresting; begun, like Dakkeh,
by an Ethiopian king and finished by Ptolemies and Cæsars. The one
curious thing about it is a secret cell, most cunningly devised.
Adjoining the sanctuary is a dark side-chamber; in the floor of the
side-chamber is a pit, once paved over; in one corner of the pit is a
man-hole opening into a narrow passage; and in the narrow passage are
steps leading up to a secret chamber constructed in the thickness of the
wall. We saw other secret chambers in other temples,[173] but not one in
which the old approaches were so perfectly preserved.
From Dabôd to Philæ is but ten miles; and we are bound for Torrigûr,
which is two miles nearer. Now Torrigûr is that same village at the foot
of the beautiful sand-drift, near which we moored on our way up the
river; and here we are to stay two days, followed by at least a week at
Philæ. No sooner, therefore, have we reached Torrigûr than Reïs Hassan
and three sailors start for Assûan to buy flour. Old Ali, Riskalli and
Mûsa, whose homes lie in the villages round about, get leave of absence
for a week; and we find ourselves reduced all at once to a crew of five,
with only Khaleefeh in command. Five, however, are as good as fifty when
the dahabeeyah lies moored and there is nothing to do; and our five,
having succeeded in buying some flabby Nubian cakes and green lentils,
are now quite happy. So the painter pitches his tent on the top of the
sand-drift; and the writer sketches the ruined convent opposite; and
L---- and the little lady write no end of letters; and the idle man,
with Mehemet Ali for a retriever, shoots quail, and everybody is
satisfied.
Hapless idle man! hapless but homicidal. If he had been content to shoot
only quail, and had not taken to shooting babies! What possessed him to
do it? Not--not let us hope--an ill-directed ambition foiled of
crocodiles! He went serene and smiling, with his gun under his arm, and
Mehemet Ali in his wake. Who so light of heart as that idle man? Who so
light of heel as that turbaned retriever? We heard our sportsman popping
away presently in the barley. It was a pleasant sound, for we knew his
aim was true. “Every shot,” said we, “means a bird.” We little dreamed
that one of those shots meant a baby.
All at once a woman screamed. It was a sharp, sudden scream, following a
shot--a scream with a ring of horror in it. Instantly it was caught up
from point to point, growing in volume and seeming to be echoed from
every direction at once. At the same moment the bank became alive with
human beings. They seemed to spring from the soil--women shrieking and
waving their arms; men running; all making for the same goal. The writer
heard the scream, saw the rush, and knew at once that a gun accident had
happened.
A few minutes of painful suspense followed. Then Mehemet Ali appeared,
tearing back at the top of his speed; and presently--perhaps five
minutes later, though it seemed like twenty--came the idle man; walking
very slowly and defiantly, with his head up, his arms folded, his gun
gone, and an immense rabble at his heels.
Our scanty crew, armed with sticks, flew at once to the rescue, and
brought him off in safety. We then learned what had happened.
A flight of quail had risen; and as quail fly low, skimming the surface
of the grain and diving down again almost immediately, he had taken a
level aim. At the instant that he fired, and in the very path of the
quail, a woman and child who had been squatting in the barley, sprang up
screaming. He at once saw the coming danger; and, with admirable
presence of mind, drew the charge of his second barrel. He then hid his
cartridge-box and hugged his gun, determined to hold it as long as
possible. The next moment he was surrounded, overpowered, had the gun
wrenched from his grasp, and received a blow on the back with a stone.
Having captured the gun, one or two of the men let go. It was then that
he shook off the rest and came back to the boat. Mehemet Ali at the same
time flew to call a rescue. He, too, came in for some hard knocks,
besides having his shirt rent and his turban torn off his head.
Here were we, meanwhile, with less than half our crew, a private war on
our hands, no captain, and one of our three guns in the hands of the
enemy. What a scene it was! A whole village, apparently a very
considerable village, swarming on the bank; all hurrying to and fro; all
raving, shouting, gesticulating. If we had been on the verge of a fracas
at Tafah, here we were threatened with a siege.
Drawing in the plank between the boat and the shore, we held a hasty
council of war.
The woman being unhurt, and the child, if hurt at all, hurt very
slightly, we felt justified in assuming an injured tone, calling the
village to account for a case of cowardly assault, and demanding instant
restitution of the gun. We accordingly sent Talhamy to parley with the
head man of the place and peremptorily demand the gun. We also bade him
add--and this we regarded as a master-stroke of policy--that if due
submission was immediately made, the howadji, one of whom was a Hakeem,
would permit the father to bring his child on board to have its hurts
attended to.
Outwardly indifferent, inwardly not a little anxious, we waited the
event. Talhamy’s back being toward the river, we had the whole
semicircle of swarthy faces full in view--bent brows, flashing eyes,
glittering teeth; all anger, all scorn, all defiance. Suddenly the
expression of the faces changed--the change beginning with those nearest
the speaker, and spreading gradually outward. It was as if a wave had
passed over them. We knew then that our _coup_ was made. Talhamy
returned. The villagers crowded round their leaders, deliberating.
Numbers now began to sit down; and when a Nubian sits down, you may be
sure that he is no longer dangerous.
Presently--after perhaps a quarter of an hour--the gun was brought back
uninjured, and an elderly man carrying a blue bundle appeared on the
bank. The plank was now put across; the crowd was kept off; and the man
with the bundle, and three or four others, were allowed to pass.
The bundle being undone, a little brown imp of about four years of age,
with shaven head and shaggy scalp-lock, was produced. He whimpered at
first, seeing the strange white faces; but when offered a fig, forgot
his terrors, and sat munching it like a monkey. As for his wounds, they
were literally skin-deep, the shot having but slightly grazed his
shoulders in four or five places. The idle man, however, solemnly
sponged the scratches with warm water, and L---- covered them with
patches of sticking-plaster. Finally, the father was presented with a
napoleon; the patient was wrapped in one of his murderer’s shirts; and
the first act of the tragedy ended. The second and third acts were to
come.
When the painter and the idle man talked the affair over, they agreed
that it was expedient, for the protection of future travelers, to lodge
a complaint against the village; and this mainly on account of the
treacherous blow dealt from behind, at a time when the idle man (who had
not once attempted to defend himself) was powerless in the hands of a
mob. They therefore went next day to Assûan; and the governor, charming
as ever, promised that justice should be done. Meanwhile we moved the
dahabeeyah to Philæ, and there settled down for a week’s sketching.
Next evening came a woful deputation from Torrigûr, entreating
forgiveness and stating that fifteen villagers had been swept off to
prison.
The idle man explained that he no longer had anything to do with it;
that the matter, in short, was in the hands of justice, and would be
dealt with according to law. Hereupon the spokesman gathered up a
handful of imaginary dust and made believe to scatter it on his head.
“O dragoman!” he said, “tell the howadji that there is no law but his
pleasure and no justice but the will of the governor!”
Summoned next morning to give evidence, the idle man went betimes to
Assûan, where he was received in private by the governor and mudîr.
Pipes and coffee were handed and the usual civilities exchanged. The
governor then informed his guest that fifteen men of Torrigûr had been
arrested; and that fourteen of them unanimously identified the fifteenth
as the one who struck the blow.
“And now,” said the governor, “before we send for the prisoners it will
be as well to decide on the sentence. What does his excellency wish done
to them?”
The idle man was puzzled. How could he offer an opinion, being ignorant
of the Egyptian civil code? and how could the sentence be decided upon
before the trial?
The governor smiled serenely.
“But,” he said, “this is the trial.”
Being an Englishman, it necessarily cost the idle man an effort to
realize the full force of this explanation--an explanation which, in its
sublime simplicity, epitomized the whole system of the judicial
administration of Egyptian law. He hastened, however, to explain that he
cherished no resentment against the culprit or the villagers, and that
his only wish was to frighten them into a due respect for travelers in
general.
The governor hereupon invited the mudîr to suggest a sentence; and the
mudîr--taking into consideration, as he said, his excellency’s lenient
disposition--proposed to award to the fourteen innocent men one month’s
imprisonment each; and to the real offender two month’s imprisonment,
with a hundred and fifty blows of the bastinado.
Shocked at the mere idea of such a sentence, the idle man declared that
he must have the innocent set at liberty; but consented that the
culprit, for the sake of example, should be sentenced to the one hundred
and fifty blows--the punishment to be remitted after the first few
strokes had been dealt. Word was now given for the prisoners to be
brought in.
The jailer marched first, followed by two soldiers. Then came the
fifteen prisoners--I am ashamed to write it!--chained neck to neck, in
single file.
One can imagine how the idle man felt at this moment.
Sentence being pronounced, the fourteen looked as if they could hardly
believe their ears; while the fifteenth, though condemned to his one
hundred and fifty strokes (“seventy-five to each foot,” specified the
governor), was overjoyed to be let off so easily.
He was then flung down; his feet were fastened soles uppermost; and two
soldiers proceeded to execute the sentence. As each blow fell, he cried:
“God save the governor! God save the mudîr! God save the howadji!”
When the sixth stroke had been dealt the idle man turned to the governor
and formally interceded for the remission of the rest of the sentence.
The governor as formally granted the request, and the prisoners, weeping
with joy, were set at liberty.
The governor, the mudîr, and the idle man then parted with a profusion
of compliments; the governor protesting that his only wish was to be
agreeable to the English, and that the whole village should have been
bastinadoed had his excellency desired it.
* * * * *
We spent eight enchanted days at Philæ, and it so happened, when the
afternoon of the eighth came round, that for the last few hours the
writer was alone on the island. Alone, that is to say, with only a
sailor in attendance, which was virtually solitude; and Philæ is a place
to which solitude adds an inexpressible touch of pathos and remoteness.
It has been a hot day, and there is dead calm on the river. My last
sketch finished, I wander slowly round from spot to spot, saying
farewell to Pharaoh’s bed--to the painted columns--to the terrace, and
palm, and shrine, and familiar point of view. I peep once again into the
mystic chamber of Osiris. I see the sun set for the last time from the
roof of the Temple of Isis. Then, when all that wondrous flush of rose
and gold has died away, comes the warm after-glow. No words can paint
the melancholy beauty of Philæ at this hour. The surrounding mountains
stand out jagged and purple against a pale amber sky. The Nile is
glassy. Not a breath, not a bubble, troubles the inverted landscape.
Every palm is twofold; every stone is doubled. The big bowlders in
mid-stream are reflected so perfectly that it is impossible to tell
where the rock ends and the water begins. The temples, meanwhile, have
turned to a subdued golden bronze; and the pylons are peopled with
shapes that glow with fantastic life, and look ready to step down from
their places.
The solitude is perfect, and there is a magical stillness in the air. I
hear a mother crooning to her baby on the neighboring island--a sparrow
twittering in its little nest in the capital of a column below my
feet--a vulture screaming plaintively among the rocks in the far
distance.
I look; I listen; I promise myself that I will remember it all in years
to come--all the solemn hills, these silent colonnades, these deep,
quiet spaces of shadow, these sleeping palms. Lingering till it is all
but dark, I at last bid them farewell, fearing lest I may behold them no
more.