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Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. The Hebrew, Arabic, Coptic, and Greek text has been corrected by comparison with the German edition from which this work was translated.
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Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, and the peninsula of Sinai
LETTERS FROM EGYPT, ETHIOPIA, AND THE PENINSULA OF SINAI.
BY DR. RICHARD LEPSIUS.
WITH EXTRACTS FROM HIS CHRONOLOGY OF THE EGYPTIANS, WITH REFERENCE TO THE EXODUS OF THE ISRAELITES.
REVISED BY THE AUTHOR.
TRANSLATED BY LEONORA AND JOANNA B. HORNER.
LONDON: HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. MDCCCLIII.
TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE.
The first part of this volume consists of Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Peninsula of Sinai, published in 1852. In addition to the Map of the Nile, published in the German edition, and the view of Mount Barkal, we have been enabled, through the kindness of Dr. Lepsius, to give a Map of the Peninsula of Sinai, from an unpublished pamphlet, printed at Berlin in 1846 (Reise des Prof. Lepsius von Theben nach der Halbinsel des Sinai, vom 4 März bis zum 14 April, 1845), which will be found to contribute much to the elucidation of the interesting Letter on Mount Sinai.
In the Appendix we have inserted a geological paper, by Mr. Horner, from the “Edinburgh Philosophical Journal” for July, 1850, in which some doubts are thrown upon the theory of Dr. Lepsius concerning a supposed excavation of the bed of the Nile within the historical period. We have done this at the request of Dr. Lepsius, who is desirous to call more particular attention to the subject.
The Letters are succeeded by extracts (chiefly relating to the Hebrew Chronology) from Dr. Lepsius’s larger work (of which only one volume has yet been published), Die Chronologie der Ægypter, in which he states his conclusions respecting the date of the Exodus. We have also obtained permission from Chevalier Bunsen to add a note (p. 475), pointing out how far he differs from Dr. Lepsius respecting the period when the Israelites entered Egypt. It has been thought desirable to omit those sections which enter into the subject more minutely than would interest the general reader.
The whole of this portion of the translation has been revised by the author, and throughout the volume, whatever alterations or additions have been suggested by him, are placed between brackets.
A Table of the Egyptian Dynasties, drawn up by Mr. Horner, has been added, and, at his request, revised by Dr. Lepsius, who has inserted the results of his latest investigations concerning the dates of the different Dynasties.
Wherever measurements by feet are mentioned, French feet are to be understood, unless it is otherwise specified.
August, 1853.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE LETTERS.
The object of the Scientific Expedition which the KING OF PRUSSIA sent to Egypt in the year 1842, was to investigate and collect, with an historical and antiquarian view, the ancient Egyptian monuments in the Nile valley, and upon the Peninsula of Sinai. It was fitted out and maintained for more than three years by the munificence of the King, and enjoyed uninterruptedly his gracious favour and sympathy, as well as the most active and kind attention from ALEXANDER V. HUMBOLDT, and by a rare union of fortunate circumstances, it attained the purposes they had in view, as completely as could be expected. A “Preliminary Account of the Expedition, its Results, and their Publication” (Berlin, 1849; 4to), was issued at the same time with the first portion of the great work upon the Monuments, which will be published by desire of his Majesty, in a style corresponding with the magnificence of the treasures we brought away with us, and which will contain a concise survey of the principal results of the Expedition.
In the work upon “the Monuments of Egypt and Ethiopia,” here announced, which will comprise more than 800 folio plates, half of which are already completed, and 240 published, these results will be fully displayed, as far as regards Sculpture, Topography, and Architecture, and they will be considered more accurately in the accompanying text.
Independently, however, of our strictly scientific labours, it appeared right to offer a picture to a larger circle of interested readers of the external features of the Expedition, the personal co-operation of the different members belonging to it, the obstacles, or the fortunate circumstances of the journey, the condition of the countries that we traversed, and the influence they exercised on the immediate objects of our undertaking; finally, a series of remarks on the individual sites of the monuments in that most historical of all countries, with all the meaning and completeness in which they appear to those travellers who, by their study of that most ancient history, are peculiarly prepared to understand them, but which may also excite an increased sympathy in others who have acknowledged the great importance of this newly-established science. If it should directly further a correct criticism of the scientific labours which have resulted from this journey, and which are being gradually published, to consult the circumstances under which the materials were collected, I believe that no farther justification is necessary for the publication of the following Letters, however little pretension they may have on the one side to the completeness and the literary charm of a regular account of travels, or, on the other side, to the value of a strictly scientific work.
The Letters have remained almost throughout in their original form; some are respectfully addressed to his Majesty the King, some to his Excellency Eichhorn, at that time Minister of Public Instruction, or to other distinguished patrons and honoured men, such as A. v. Humboldt, Bunsen, v. Olfers, Ehrenberg, and lastly, some to my father, who constantly preserved the liveliest interest in all that concerned me. Several letters, immediately upon their arrival in Europe, were printed in the newspapers, especially in the Prussian Gazette, and from that were received into other papers. The immaterial alterations in some of the details are, for the most part, only made for publication. All additions or expansions are put in the form of notes. To this class belong the more detailed notes and the proofs given concerning the true position of Sinai, which, I believe, is pointed out for the first time by me; this has since been criticised from different quarters, and has been condemned by some, while it has met with approbation from others. The subject of the 36th Letter on the decoration of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin is certainly very different from the rest; but as an exception it may be justified, since the point there considered is not only of local interest in Berlin, but is valuable in all cases of observation, where there are similar requirements, and where the subject treated about is a method of adjustment between ancient Egyptian and modern Art.
Berlin, 2nd June, 1852.
I. On board the Oriental Steamer, 5th September, 1842 35
Voyage to Alexandria.
II. Alexandria, 23rd September, 1842 38
Malta—Gobat—Isenberg—Krapf—Alexandria—Mohammed Ali.
III. Cairo, 16th October, 1842 41
Alexandria—Pompey’s Pillar—Cleopatra’s Needle—Werne’s Collection of Natural History—Departure from Alexandria—Sais—Naharieh—Cairo—Heliopolis—The Celebration of the King’s Birthday at the Pyramids—Panoramic View from the Pyramid of Cheops.
IV. At the foot of the largest Pyramid, 2nd January, 1843 51
Pyramids of Gizeh—Tombs of Private Individuals—Sphinx—A Deluge of Rain—Celebration of Christmas—Life in the Camp.
V. Pyramids of Gizeh, 17th January, 1843 56
The Hieroglyphic Memorial tablet on the Pyramid of Cheops—What we gained in a Historical point of View.
VI. Pyramids of Gizeh, 28th January, 1843 59
The most ancient Royal Dynasties—Tomb of Prince Merhet—Tombs of Private Individuals—Ravages committed by the Arabs—Most ancient Obelisk.
VII. Saqâra, 18th March, 1843 64
Pyramids of Meidûm—The Structure of Pyramids—The Enigma of the Sphinx—Locusts—Comet.
VIII. Saqâra, 13th April, 1843 69
Prince Albert of Prussia—Festivities in Cairo—Entrance of Pilgrims—Mulid e’ Nebbi—Doseh—Visit of the Prince to the Pyramids—Most ancient Application of the Pointed Arch in Cairo—The most ancient Round Arch in Egypt—Attack by Night in Saqâra—Day of Trial.
IX. Cairo, 22nd April, 1843 79
Plan of the Site of the Pyramid Fields—Cairo.
X. Ruins of the Labyrinth, 31st May, 1843 81
Departure for the Faiûm—Camels and Dromedaries—Lischt— Meidûm—Illahûn—Labyrinth—Arabic Song—Bedouins—Turkish Kawass.
XI. The Labyrinth, 25th June, 1843 89
The Ruins of the Labyrinth—Its First Builder—Its Pyramid—Lake Mœris.
XII. The Labyrinth, 18th July, 1843 94
Journey round the Faiûm—The Dams of Mœris—Birket-el-Qorn— Diméh—Qasr Qerûn.
XIII. Cairo, 14th August, 1843 98
Departure of Frey—Ethiopian Manuscripts.
XIV. Thebes, 13th October, 1843 100
Voyage on the Nile to Upper Egypt—Rock-Grotto of Surarieh—Tombs of the Sixth Dynasty, in Central Egypt; of the Twelfth, in Benihassan, Siut, Berscheh—Arrival in Thebes—Climate—Journey onwards.
XV. Korusko, 20th November, 1843 105
Greek Inscriptions—Benihassan—Berscheh—Tombs of the Sixth Dynasty—El Amarna—Siut—Alabaster Quarries of El Bosra—Echmim (Chemmis)—Thebes—El Kab (Eileithyia)—Edfu— Ombos—Egyptian Canon of Proportions—Assuan—Philæ— Hieroglyphic-Demotic Inscriptions—Succession of the Ptolemies—Entrance into Lower Nubia—Debôt—Gertassi— Kalabscheh (Talmis)—Dendûr—Dakkeh (Pselchis)—Korte— Hierasykaminos—Mehendi—Sebûa—Korusko—Nubian Language.
XVI. Korusko, 5th January, 1844 130
Scarcity of Camels—Excursion to Wadi Haifa—Achmed Pascha Menekle and the newly-named Pascha of the Sudan.
XVII. E’ Dâmer, 24th January, 1844 133
Nubian Desert—Roft Mountain Range—Wadi E’ Sufr—Wadi Murhad—Ababde Arabs—Abu Hammed—The Province of Berber—El Mechêref—Mogrân or Atbara (Astaboras)—E’ Dâmer—Mandera.
XVIII. On the Blue River, Province of Sennâr, 13° N. Lat., 2nd March, 1844 148
The borders of a Tropical Climate—Kawass—Hagi Ibrahim—Meröe— Begerauîeh—Pyramids—Ferlini—The Age of the Monuments— Schendi—Ben Naga—Naga in the Desert—Mesaurât e’ Sofra— Tamaniât—Chartûm—Bahr el Abiat (the White River)—Dinka and Schilluk—Soba—Kamlîn—Bauer—Inscription on Marble— Baobab—Abu Harras—Rahad—Character of the Country—Dender— Dilêb Palms—Sennâr—Abdîn—Româli—Sero—Return towards the North—Wed Médineh—Sorîba—Sultâna Nasr—Gabre Máriam—Rebâbi— Funeral Ceremony—The Military—Emin Pascha—Tâiba—Messelemîeh— Kamlîn—Soba—Vase with an Inscription.
XIX. Chartûm, 21st March, 1844 190
Military Revolt at Wed Médineh—Insurrection of the Slaves.
XX. The Pyramids of Meröe, 22nd April, 1844 193
Tamaniât—Qirre Mountain Range—Meröe—Return of the Turkish Army from Taka—Osman Bey—Prisoners from Taka—Language of the Bischâri from Taka—Customs in the South—Pyramids of Meröe—Ethiopian Inscriptions—Name of Meröe.
XXI. Keli, 29th April, 1844 210
Departure from Meröe—Groups of Tombs north of Meröe.
XXII. Barkal, 9th May, 1844 213
The Desert of Gilif—Gôs Burri—Wadi Gaqedûl—Mágeqa—Trees of the Desert—Wadi Abu Dôm—Wadi Gazâl—Coptic Churches—Greek Inscriptions—Pyramids of Nuri—Arrival at Barkal.
XXIII. Mount Barkal, 28th May, 1844 222
Ethiopian Kings—Temple of Ramses II.—Napata—Méraui—Climate.
XXIV. Dongola, 15th June, 1844 225
Excursion into the Cataract Country—Bân—Departure from Barkal—Pyramids of Tangassi, Kurru, and Zûma—Churches and Fortifications of Bachît, Magal, Gebel Dêqa—Old Dongola—Nubian Language.
XXV. Dongola, 23rd June, 1844 233
Island of Argo—Kermân and Defûfa—Tombos—Inscriptions of Tuthmosis I.—Languages of Darfur.
XXVI. Korusko, 17th August, 1844 235
Fakir Fenti—Sêse—Soleb—Gebel Dosche—Sedeïnga—Amara—Island of Sai—Sulphur Spring Of Okmeh—Semneh—Heights of the Nile in the Reign of Amenemha-Mœris—Abu Simbel—Greek Inscription in the Reign of Psammeticus I.—Ibrîm (Primis) Anîbe—Korusko.
XXVII. Philæ, 1st September, 1844 241
Wadi Kenûs—Bega Language of the Bischâri—Talmis—Philæ— Meroitic-Ethiopian Inscriptions.
XXVIII. Thebes—Qurna, 24th November, 1844 243
Excavations in the Temple and in the Rock-Tombs of Ramses II.—Languages of the Sudan—History and Civilisation of Ethiopia.
XXIX. Thebes—Qurna, 8th January, 1845 245
Monuments and Plaster Casts we took away with us.
XXX. Thebes, 25th February, 1845 246
Description of Thebes—The Temple of Karnac, and its History—Luqsor—El Asasif—Statue of Memnon—The Memnonium—Temple of Ramses II.—Medînet Hâbu—The Royal Tombs—Tombs of Private Individuals from the Time of Psammeticus—Imperial Time—Coptic Convents and Churches—Copts of the present Day—Revenge for bloodshed among the Arabs—Our dwelling in Abd-el-Qurna—Visit from Travellers.
XXXI. On the Red Sea, 21st March, 1845 274
Change of abode from Qurna to Karnac—Departure to the Peninsula of Sinai—Qenneh—Seïd Hussên—Stone-Quarries and Inscriptions of Hamamât—Gebel Fatireh—Losing our Way—Porphyry Quarries at Gebel Dochân—Gebel Zeït.
XXXII. Convent of Sinai, 24th March, 1845 290
Landing at Tôr—Gebel Hammâm—Wadi Hebrân—Convent—Gebel Mûsa—Gebel Sefsâf.
XXXIII. On the Red Sea, 6th April, 1845 293
Departure from the Convent—Wadi e’ Scheikh—Ascent of Serbâl—Wadi Firân—Wadi Mokatteb—Copper Mines of Wadi Maghâra—Rock-Inscriptions of the Fourth Dynasty—Sarbut el Châdem—Mounds of Dross—Wadi Nasb—Harbour of Abu Zelîmeh—The true Position of Sinai—Tradition of the Monks—Local and Historical Conditions—Elim at Abu Zelîmeh—Mara in Wadi Gharandel—The Desert of Sin—Sinai, the Mount of Sin—The Mount of God—Subsistence of the Israelites—Raphidîm at Pharan—Sinai-Choreb at Raphidîm—Review of the Question upon Sinai.
XXXIV. Thebes—Karnac, 4th May, 1845 321
Return to Thebes—Revenge for bloodshed.
XXXV. Cairo, 10th July, 1845 322
Dendera—El Amarna—Dr. Bethmann—Removal of the Sepulchral Chambers at the Pyramids.
XXXVI. Cairo, 11th July, 1845 323
The Egyptian Museum in Berlin—Pictures on the Walls.
XXXVII. Jaffa, 7th October, 1845 332
Journey across the Delta—San (Tanis)—Arrival in Jaffa.
XXXVIII. Nazareth, 9th November, 1845 333
Jerusalem—Nablus (Sichem)—Tabor—Nazareth—Lake of Tiberias.
XXXIX. Smyrna, 7th December, 1845 336
Carmel—Libanon—Berut—Departure to Damascus—Zachleh—Tomb of Noah—Bárada—Tomb of Abel—Inscriptions at Bárada—Tomb of Seth—Bâlbeck—Ibrahim—Cedars of Libanon—Egyptian and Assyrian Rock-Inscriptions at Nahr el Kelb.
PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF THE EXPEDITION AND ITS RESULTS.
In the year 1842, in accordance with the proposal of Eichhorn, at that time Minister of Instruction, and at the recommendation of MM. Alexander v. Humboldt and Bunsen, his Majesty King Frederic William IV. of Prussia determined to send a scientific expedition to investigate the remains of ancient Egyptian and Ethiopian civilisation still in preservation in the Nile valley and the adjacent countries. The direction of the undertaking was entrusted to me, after the detailed plans of the proposed expedition had been minutely examined by the Royal Academy of Sciences, and in all points graciously approved by the King.
The land-surveyor, G. Erbkam, from Berlin, and the draughtsmen and painters, Ernest and Max Weidenbach, from Naumburg, and J. Frey, from Basle, were appointed to make the drawings and coloured representations, as well as those architectonic plans, which had to be executed on the spot. When J. Frey was obliged to return to Europe from Lower Egypt, on account of the injurious climate, he was replaced by the painter O. Georgi, from Leipzig. Two English artists, also, J. Bonomi, who, from the interest he took in the journey, became attached to our party while we were in London, and the architect J. Wild, who joined us of his own accord, took an active part in the expedition as long as it remained in Lower Egypt. Lastly, during nearly the whole of the journey, we enjoyed the society of the present Counsellor of Legation, H. Abeken, who accompanied us voluntarily and on an independent footing, and who in various ways promoted the antiquarian objects of the journey. We were also provided with the means of obtaining plaster casts of those representations that were best qualified for the purpose, by the addition of Franke the moulder.
The different members of the expedition arriving by various roads, met in Alexandria, on the 18th September, 1842. On the 9th November we encamped near the great Pyramids of Gizeh. What we obtained on that spot, as well as from the adjoining Pyramid fields of Abusir, Saqâra, and Daschûr, which are situated to the south, occupied us exclusively and uninterruptedly for more than six months. The inexhaustible number of important and instructive monuments and representations, which we met with in these Necropoli, the most ancient that have existed in any country, surpassed every expectation we had been entitled to hold concerning them, and accounts for our long abode in this part of the country, which is the first approached and visited, but has, notwithstanding, been very little investigated. If we except the celebrated and well-known examination of the Pyramids in the year 1837, by Colonel Howard Vyse, assisted by the accomplished architect Perring, little had been done to promote a more minute investigation of this remarkable spot; the French-Tuscan expedition, in particular, did little more than pass through it. Nevertheless, the innumerable tombs of private individuals grouped about those royal Pyramids, partly constructed of massive square blocks, partly hewn into the living rock, contain, almost exclusively, representations belonging to the old Egyptian Monarchy, which terminated between two and three thousand years before Christ; indeed, most of them belong to the fourth and fifth Manethonic Dynasties, therefore between three and four thousand years before Christ. The wonderful age of those Pyramids, and of the surrounding tombs, is no longer generally denied by intelligent inquirers, and in the first volume of my “Egyptian Chronology,”[1] which has lately appeared, I have endeavoured to furnish a critical proof of the certain foundations we possess for a more special determination of time as far back as that period. But were any one only to believe in the lowest acceptation of modern scholars concerning the age of the first Egyptian Dynasties, he would still be compelled to yield priority to those monuments before any other Egyptian remains of art, and generally before all artistic remains belonging to the whole race of man, to which we can historically refer. It is only to this that we can attribute the wonderful growth in the interest which we attach, partly to the monuments themselves, as proofs of the earliest activity shown in art, partly to the various representations of the manner of living in those primitive times.
On the western border of the Desert, which stretches from the most northerly groups of Pyramids at Abu Roasch, past the ruins of the old capital of Memphis, to the Oasis-peninsula of the “Faiûm,” we discovered the remains of sixty-seven Pyramids, which, with a few exceptions, were only destined for kings, and in the neighbourhood of the principal groups we investigated, still more minutely, 130 tombs of private individuals, which deserved to be more particularly recorded. A great many of these sepulchral chambers, richly adorned with representations and inscriptions, could only be reached by excavations. Most of them belonged to the highest functionaries of those flourishing Dynasties, among whom there were also thirteen royal princes and seven princesses.
After we had taken the most careful topographical plans of all the fields of Pyramids, and had noted down the architectonic ground plans, and sections of the most important tombs, and after we had, in the most complete manner, drawn or taken paper impressions of their pictures and inscriptions, as far as they were accessible to us, we had accomplished more completely than we ever hoped to do, the first and most important task of our journey, since we had acquired a basis for our knowledge concerning the monuments of the oldest Egyptian monarchy.
On the 19th May, 1843, we proceeded still farther, and encamped on the 23rd in the Faiûm, upon the ruins of the LABYRINTH. Its true position was long ago conjectured; and our first view dissipated all our doubts concerning it. The interesting discovery of the actual site of the ancient Lake Mœris was made about the same time, by the distinguished French architect Linant, which we had the opportunity of confirming on the spot. This greatly facilitated the means of comprehending the topographical and historical conditions of this province, so remarkable in all its features. The magnificent schemes which converted this originally desolate Oasis into one of the most productive parts of Egypt, were intimately connected with each other, and must have belonged, if not to a single king, still to one epoch of time. The most important result we obtained by our investigations of the Labyrinth and of the adjoining Pyramids, was the determination of the historical position of the original founder; this we obtained by excavations, which occupied a considerable time. We discovered that the king, who was erroneously called Mœris by the Greeks, from Lake Mere—i. e. from the Lake of the Nile inundation—lived at the end of the 12th Manethonic Dynasty, shortly before the invasion of the Hyksos, and was called Amenemhe by Manetho Ἀμενέμης, the third of his name. His predecessors in the same Dynasty had already founded the town of Crocodilopolis, in the centre of the Faiûm, which is proved by some ruins that still exist belonging to that period; and they probably conducted the Nile Canal, Bahr-Jusef, which branches off from Derut-Scherif, into the basin of the Desert. That part of the basin which is most advanced, and situated highest, terminated in a lake formed by means of gigantic dams, many of which still exist; and the connection of the canal was regulated by sluices in such a manner, that in the dry season the reserved water could flow back again into the valley of the Nile, and irrigate the country round the capital long after the Nile had retreated within its banks. Amenemhe built his Pyramid on the shore of the lake, and a splendid temple in front of it. It afterwards formed the centre of the Labyrinth, whose many hundred chambers, forming three regular masses of buildings, surrounded the oldest portion, and, according to Herodotus, were destined by the Dodecarchs for the general Diets. The ruins of the Labyrinth had never yet been correctly represented, not even in their general arrangement. An Arabian canal, which was carried through it at a later period, had drawn away the attention of passing travellers from that portion of the chambers which was in best preservation. We have made the most exact ground plan, accompanied by sections and views. A journey round the province, as far as Birqet-el-Qorn, and beyond it, to the ruins of Diméh and Qasr Qerûn, induced us to remain several months in this neighbourhood.
On the 23rd August we embarked at Beni-suef, visited a small rock-temple of King Sethôs I. at Surarieh, on the eastern shore, and farther on, the remains of later monuments in the neighbourhood of Tehneh. At Kûm-Ahmar, a little to the south of Zauiet-el-meitîn, we examined a series of nineteen rock-tombs belonging to the 6th Manethonic Dynasty. The groups of tombs which are scattered about a few days’ journey to the south, at Schech-Said, El-Harib, Wadi-Selin, and still farther on, at Qasr-e’-Saiât, also belonged to this period, which, in point of age, was immediately connected with the flourishing time of the great builder of the Pyramids. If we judge by the remains now extant, it appears that there were, at that early period especially, in this portion of Central Egypt, a number of flourishing cities. Royal kindred are frequently met with among the ancient possessors of the tombs, but no sons or daughters of the king, because there was no royal residence in that neighbourhood. But we found the last flourishing period of the Old Monarchy—the 12th Manethonic Dynasty—represented in this part of Egypt by the most beautiful and most considerable remains. The rock-tombs of Beni Hassan, so remarkable for their architecture, as well as for the various paintings on their walls, peculiarly belong to this period. The town to which they appertained, the residence of a governor of the eastern province of the country, has entirely disappeared, all except the name, which is preserved in the inscriptions. It appears that it only flourished a short time during this dynasty, and again declined at the invasion of the Hyksos. In the neighbouring Berscheh also, and farther on, among the Lybian rocks, behind the town of Siut, which was as important 4000 years ago as it is at present, we again found the same plans of tombs on as magnificent a scale, whose period of erection might be recognised even at a distance.
It is a singular fact, that in point of age the greater proportion of the remains of the Egyptian monuments become more modern the higher we ascend the Nile valley, the reverse of what might have been expected from a large view of the subject; according to which the Egyptian civilisation of the Nile valley extended from south to north. While the Pyramids of Lower Egypt, with the monuments around them, had displayed the oldest civilisation of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Dynasties in such wonderful abundance, we found the 6th Dynasty, and the most flourishing period of the 12th, the last of the Old Monarchy, especially represented in Central Egypt. Thebes was the brilliant capital of the New Monarchy, especially of their first Dynasties, surpassing all other places in the number of its wonderful monuments; and even now it offers us a reflection of the splendour of Egypt in her greatest times. Art, which still created magnificent things even in its decline, under the Ptolemies and the Roman emperors, has left considerable monuments behind it, consisting of a series of stately temples in Dendera, Erment, Esneh, Edfu, Kûm-Ombo, Debôd, Kalabscheh, Dendûr, Dakkeh, which are all, with the exception of Dendera, in the southern part of the Thebaid, or in Lower Nubia. Lastly, those monuments of the Nile valley which are situated most to the south, especially those of the “Island” of Meröe, are the latest of all, and most of them belong to the centuries after the Christian era.
We hastened immediately from the monuments of the Old Monarchy in Central Egypt to Thebes, and deferred till our return the examination of the well-preserved, but modern temple of Dendera, the ruins of Abydos, and several other places. But of Thebes, also, we took but a preliminary survey, for we only remained there twelve days, from the 6th to the 18th of October.
We were impatient to commence immediately our second fresh task, which consisted in the investigation of the Ethiopian countries, situated higher up the river. The French-Tuscan expedition did not go beyond Wadi Halfa; Wilkinson’s careful description of the Nile land and its monuments, which contains so much information, only extends a little higher up, as far as Semneh. The most various conjectures were still entertained concerning the monuments of Gebel Barkal and Meröe, with reference to their age and their signification. It was necessary to obtain a general view of the true relation between the History and Civilisation of Egypt and Ethiopia, founded upon a complete examination of the remains which are still extant.
Therefore, after a cursory visit to the temple ruins, as far up as Wadi Halfa, we returned to Korusko, from which place we started on the 8th of January, 1844, through the Great Desert to Abu-Hammed, and the Upper Nile countries. On the 16th of January we arrived at Abu-Hammed, on the other side of the desert; on the 28th, at Beg´erauîeh, near to which the Pyramids of Meröe are situated. From Schendi, which lies more to the south, we visited the temple ruins of Naga and Wadi e’ Sofra, far on in the interior of the eastern desert. On the 5th of February we reached Chartûm, at the confluence of the White and the Blue Nile. From this place, accompanied by Abeken, I descended the Blue River, passed the ruins of Soba and Sennâr, as far as the 13° of N. lat.; whilst the other members of the expedition returned from Chartûm to the Pyramids of Meröe. The tropical countries of the Nile, when contrasted with those northern ones, devoid of rain, extending south as far as the 17°; and the plants and animals now almost exclusively confined to South Ethiopia, when compared with individual representations of the ancient Egyptian monuments, were rendered still more interesting by the discovery of some monuments, with inscriptions upon them, near Soba, by which we obtained traces of the ancient vernacular language of those districts in a written character resembling the Coptic.
I also made use of our residence in these districts to be instructed by the natives of the adjacent countries in the grammar and vocabulary of their languages.
On the 5th of April I returned with Abeken to the other members of the expedition at Beg´erauîeh. After drawings had been made of all that still existed which peculiarly represented the state of civilisation in Ethiopia, and after we had taken the most exact plans of the localities, we proceeded in six days, by the desert Gilif, to Gebel Barkal, where we arrived on the 6th of May. Here was the more northern, the more ancient, and, to judge by the remains, also the more important capital of the State of Meröe. At the foot of this single mass of rock, which rises in an imposing manner, and is called there, in the hieroglyphical inscriptions, “The Sacred Mountains,” is situated Napata. The history of this place, which we may still derive from its ruins, gives us at once a key to the relations which subsisted in general between Ethiopia and Egypt, as regards the history of their civilisation. We find that the most ancient epoch of art in Ethiopia was purely Egyptian. It is as early as the period of the great Ramses, who, of all the Pharaohs, extended his power farthest, not only towards the north, but also towards the south, and testified this by monuments. At an early period he built a great temple here. The second epoch begins with King Tahraka, also known as the ruler of Egypt, the Thirhaka of the Bible. This spot was adorned with several magnificent monuments by him and his immediate successors, and though they were built in a style now employed by native kings, it is, nevertheless, only a faithful copy of the Egyptian style. Lastly, the third epoch is that of the kings of Meröe, whose dominion extended as far as Philæ, and was manifested also at Gebel Barkal by numerous monuments. On an intermediate journey into the Cataract country, situated farther up the river, which we had cut off by the Desert journey, I found only Middle-Age, but no ancient, Ethiopian remains of buildings.
The fertile and extensive province of Dongola, on the northern frontier, which we traversed on the 4th of June, after our departure from Barkal, afforded us but few remarkable ancient remains; we may, however, mention among these the island of Argo, with its monuments, from the 13th Manethonic Dynasty. They became still more numerous in the northern borders of Dongola, from which a nearly continuous Cataract country extends as far as Wadi Halfa. Near Tombos we found traces of the Egyptian dominion under the Pharaohs of the 17th and 18th Dynasties, rock-tablets with the shields of the two first Thutmosis and of the third Amenophis. Farther on, at Sesebi, there were the remains of temples of the first SETHÔS of the 19th Dynasty. The great Temple of Soleb, built by Amenophis III. and IV., detained us five days. The ruins of the Temple of Sedeïnga, and those upon the island of Sai, belonged to the 18th and 19th Dynasties. Opposite this island stood the remarkable Temple of Amara, which was built by the Kings of Meröe and Naga, and is still an important proof of the extent of their dominion.
Semneh was the next point we reached. The Nile is here compressed within a breadth of only about 1150 feet between high rocky shores. On both sides there are ruins of old temples of the 18th Dynasty. But these were not the earliest buildings which were erected here. We found a considerable number of inscriptions from the 12th and 13th Manethonic Dynasties, especially on the large foundations of the Temple of Kummeh, situated lower down, opposite Semneh on the eastern bank, as well as on the scattered rocks on both banks in the neighbourhood of that temple. Many of them were intended to indicate the highest risings of the Nile during a series of years, especially in the reigns of the Kings Amenemhe III. and Sebekhotep I., and by comparing them, we obtained the remarkable result, that about 4000 years ago the Nile used to rise at that point, on an average, twenty-two feet higher than it does at present. This, therefore, which we saw before us was the most ancient Nilometer; and the earliest statements of the heights, and their greatest number, were recorded during the reign of the same king, the Mœris of the Greeks, with whom we had already become acquainted in the Faiûm, as the great hydraulic architect. The strong fortifications on both banks of that narrow part of the river convinced us at once that, during the early times of the 12th Dynasty, this remarkable point served as the boundary of the Egyptian dominion, against the Ethiopian nations who dwelt more to the south.
At Wadi Halfa, on the 30th of July, we again left the Cataract country, remained from the 2nd to the 11th of August in Abu Simbel, examined until the end of the month the ruins of Ibrîm, Anîbe, Derr, Amada, Sebûa, Dakkeh, Kubán, Gerf-Hussên, Sabagûra, Dendûr, Kalabscheh, Debôt, and spent the whole of the following month in examining the monuments of the Island of Philæ, and the islands of Bigeh, Konosso, Sehêl, and Elephantine, surrounding it, and of the stone quarries between Philæ and Assuan. October was spent visiting Ombos, the two Silsilis, Edfu, the desert Temple of Redesíeh, El-Kâb, Esneh, Tôd, and Erment.
On the 2nd of November we again arrived on Theban ground, and first visited the rock-tombs of Qurnah, on the west side, where we remained nearly four months, till the 20th of February, 1845, when we encamped for three more months at Karnak. The number of monuments of all kinds, both above and below ground, at Thebes, is so great that they may be truly called inexhaustible, even for a combined power like ours, and for the limited portion of time which we were able to devote to their investigation. But the age of the monuments at Thebes is almost exclusively limited to the New Monarchy; and the most ancient we discovered, such as one might generally expect to find, are not earlier than the 11th Manethonic Dynasty, the last but one of the Old Monarchy; for this simple reason, because it was in this Dynasty that Thebes first became a royal residence, and hence the focus of Egyptian splendour. The great break in the succession at the end of the 12th Dynasty, caused by the invasion of the Hyksos, and their dominion, which lasted many centuries, first drove the Egyptian power back into Ethiopia, and at length entirely destroyed it, till the powerful Pharaohs of the 17th, 18th, and 19th Dynasties again advanced from the south, drove back the Semitic intruders, and raised the power of the Egyptian empire to its summit. The greater proportion of Theban monuments date also from this period. As we may suppose they have been the principal object of investigation to all travellers, therefore our work here had been for the most part anticipated.
Nevertheless it was necessary to re-examine the whole ground most carefully, partly to complete the deficiencies left by our predecessors, partly to make a proper selection of those monuments which were of most importance for our particular purpose, and which we were anxious to insert among our collections, either in the shape of a drawing, or an impression upon paper, or even in the original itself. We directed our principal attention during the whole journey, and especially here, to taking the most exact architectonic plans of all the buildings and other localities which appeared to us to be of any consequence; and for this purpose we did not hesitate to make extensive excavations. By this means we succeeded, amongst other things, in discovering, and recording for the first time, a perfect plan of the most beautiful of all the temple buildings, namely, the Ammon Temple, built by Ramses II., which is described by Diodorus under the name of the sepulchre of Osymandyas. We made several excavations also in the valleys of the royal tombs, and opened, for instance, the rock-tomb of the same Ramses II., one of the largest of those which have hitherto been accessible. Unfortunately, the interior chambers were so much destroyed by the dirt and rubbish that had fallen in, that we could make out little more from the representation upon the walls than the proprietor of the tomb.
Accompanied by the artist Max Weidenbach, I made an intermediate journey from Karnak to the peninsula of Sinai. We went thither by the old road from Koptos to Aennum (Philotera), now leading from Qeneh to Kossêr, which conducted us first to the remarkable stone quarries of Hammamât, already worked out during the Old Monarchy. The numerous rock-inscriptions, which date as far back as the 6th Dynasty, occupied us here for five whole days. From this place we passed through the Arabian chain of mountains to the north, as far as Gebel Zeït, where we embarked for Tôr, situated opposite. We ascended through Wadi Hebrân to the convent, and from thence through Wadi e’ Scheikh, Wadi Firân, W. Mokatteb, W. Maghâra, by Sarbut el Châdem, down again to Abu Zelîmeh, where we got into our vessel, to return to Kossêr and Thebes.
As early as the 4th Manethonic Dynasty, between three and four thousand years before Christ, this Desert Peninsula was subject to Egypt, and was principally colonised by the Egyptians on account of the Copper mines, which are there met with on the limits of the primitive mountain range, and the surrounding sandstone mountains. Upon several rock-tablets of Wadi Maghâra, the kings of those oldest Dynasties were represented fighting with the Semitic aborigines, and the inscriptions of Sarbut el Châdem were at least as early as the 12th Dynasty. We did not, also, lose sight of the great interest which is attached to these localities of the peninsula in connection with the Old Testament. More especially, I believe, that I have succeeded for the first time (not excepting Burckhardt) in determining the correct position of Sinai, since, contrary to the tradition of the convent, hitherto accepted, I did not recognise it in one of the southern mountains, but in Serbâl, which is situated several days’ journey more to the north, at whose base lies the only fertile oasis of the whole peninsula. This opinion which has been already published in a preliminary account of the journey, addressed to the King of Prussia, has met with frequent oppositions, but has also latterly received much approbation, I believe, in a special treatise upon the question, by W. Hogg, printed in the last half of the “Transactions for the Royal Society of Literature” (1848). I have not hitherto been able to discover any material counter-arguments in the discussions which have been held upon the subject, but, on the other hand, much stronger evidence that, contrary to the later Byzantine tradition, the more ancient Christian, and probably the Egyptian tradition itself, considered Serbâl, at whose foot the oldest convent was situated, to be the true Sinai.
On the 14th of April we returned to Thebes, and finally left it on the 16th of May. On our way back to Lower Egypt, we re-examined more minutely the monuments of Schenhur, Dendera, Hou, Abydos, Echmim, El Bosra, Tel el Amarna, and El Hibe, and on the 27th of June, our party, which had been increased at the last stage by the addition of Dr. Bethmann, again entered Cairo.
I was detained there myself some months longer than the other members of the expedition, in order to direct the transportation of several sepulchral chambers in the neighbourhood of the Great Pyramids, and to superintend the embarkation of the valuable blocks of stone, together with the other monuments, which we brought with us from Upper Egypt and Ethiopia, and which the Viceroy Mohammed Ali sent as a present to his Majesty the King of Prussia. In this troublesome as well as important affair, for the practical performance of which four experienced workmen had been expressly sent from Berlin to Egypt, I had only the kind assistance of Dr. Bethmann, who accompanied me on an independent footing during the remainder of the journey back.
After a final visit to Alexandria, we embarked on the 25th of September at Cairo for Damietta, but on the way visited the ruins of Samanúd, Behbét, and the Ramses-Temple of San (Tanis), and left Egypt on the 1st of October, in a vessel which took us to Jaffa. After we had traversed the whole length of Palestine, and from Jerusalem had visited the Dead Sea, and from Beyrout, Damascus, and Baalbec, at the mouth of the Nahr el Kelb, the ancient Lykos, we came upon the last Egyptian monuments in the north, namely, those celebrated memorial-tablets, which the great Ramses II. engraved beside the old military road, as a recollection of his warlike and victorious Asiatic campaigns in the fourteenth century before Christ. After a period of more than 3000 years, neither the form, nor even the Name-Shield of the powerful Pharaoh, at whose court Moses was educated, had been destroyed by the destructive sea-air. On one tablet, indeed, I was able to distinguish the date of the fourth, on another that of the second year of his reign.
According to the testimony of Herodotus, similar monuments of Sesostris are also found in Ionia, and some time ago, one which he describes as being there, was re-discovered. But an excursion from Smyrna to that spot soon convinced us that the rock-picture of Karabel was produced by an Asiatic and not by an Egyptian chisel.
Lastly, we saw in the Hippodrome, at Constantinople, the obelisk of the third Tuthmosis, but, like others, sought in vain for the second, which earlier travellers would have us believe that they had seen. On the 24th December, I left Constantinople, and landed on the 5th January, 1846, in Trieste.
* * * * *
The whole journey, of which this is a very hasty sketch, was one of the most fortunate expeditions which has ever been undertaken for a similar purpose. None who participated in it suffered from the climate or the accidental casualties of a journey. We travelled under the powerful and, in every way efficient protection of the Viceroy. We had an explicit and written permission to make excavations, wherever we should consider it desirable, and we employed it, to acquire a number of interesting monuments for the Royal Museum at Berlin, which would either have remained in Egypt as rubbish under the sand-hills, or exposed, like so many others, to be destroyed, for all kinds of material purposes.
The scientific results of the expedition have, in almost all respects, surpassed our own expectations. In confirmation of this it will be sufficient briefly to survey these results, which I shall do in the following pages, according to their principal objects, and by entering into some of the details.
The plan of the journey, as a whole, and in its individual parts, was founded principally with a Historical purpose in view. The French-Tuscan expedition, compared with ours was a Journey of Discovery, with all the advantages, but also with all the disadvantages, connected with such an undertaking. We were able from the commencement to aspire after a certain completeness, within the wide limits that were assigned us, not however failing in making new discoveries, which were as important as they were unexpected. The investigation of the most ancient Egyptian times, namely, the epoch of the first Pharaonic Monarchy, from about 3900 to 1700 before Christ, extending the history of the world almost two thousand years farther back, was left entirely unfathomed by Champollion. He only ascended the Nile valley as far as the second Cataract, beyond which there existed a great number of Egyptian monuments of all kinds, wholly unexamined, in which we must seek for an explanation of all those Ethiopian antiquities which are inseparable from the Egyptian.
The most important results we obtained, therefore, were in Chronology and History. The Pyramid-fields of Memphis gave us a notion of the Civilisation of Egypt in those primitive times, which is pictorially presented to us in 400 large drawings, and will be considered in future as the first section in that portion of the history of man, capable of investigation, and must be regarded with the greatest interest. Those earliest Dynasties of Egyptian dominion, now afford us more than a barren series of empty, lost, and doubtful names. They are not only free from every real doubt and arranged in the Order and the Epochs of time, which have been determined by a critical examination, but by showing us the flourishing condition of the people in those times, both in the affairs of the State, Civil affairs, and in the Arts, they have received an intellectual and frequently a very individual historical reality. We have already mentioned the discovery of five different burial-places of the 6th Dynasty in Central Egypt, and what we obtained from them. The prosperous times of the New Monarchy, namely, the period of splendour in the Thebaid, as well as the Dynasties which followed, were necessarily more or less completed and verified. Even the Ptolemies, with whom we appeared to be perfectly acquainted in the clear narratives of Grecian history, have come forward in a new light through the Egyptian representations and inscriptions, and their deficiencies have been filled up by persons who were hitherto considered doubtful, and were hardly mentioned by the Greeks. Lastly, on the Egyptian monuments we beheld the Roman emperors in still greater and almost unbroken series, in their capacity of Egyptian governors, and they have been carried down since Caracalla, who had hitherto been considered as the last name written in hieroglyphics, through two additional later emperors, as far as Decius, by which means the whole Egyptian monumental history has been extended for a series of years in the other direction.
Egyptian Philology has also made considerable progress by this journey. The lexicon has been increased by our becoming acquainted with several hundred signs, or groups, and the grammar has received a great many corrections. Such copious materials have also been acquired for these purposes, especially by the numerous paper impressions of the most important inscriptions, that Egyptian Philology must be essentially furthered by their being gradually adopted. For owing to the strict accuracy of these impressions, they are almost as valuable, in many investigations, as an equally large collection of original monuments. In addition to this, the history of the Egyptian language, which by the great age attributed to the earliest written monuments, embraces a period of time between five or six thousand years, becomes now of much greater importance in the universal history of the human language and writing. Among the individual discoveries we made, the one which attracted most attention, was that of the two decrees on the Island of Philæ, which were bilingual, namely, written in hieroglyphics, and in the demotic character,—one of which contains the decree belonging to the Rosetta inscription, referring to the wife of Epiphanes.
In spite of numerous writings upon Egyptian Mythology, it has nevertheless been hitherto deficient in a fixed monumental basis. In the Temple at Thebes we beheld a series of representations whose meaning had not hitherto been recognised, and which seem to me to afford entirely new conclusions for the correct comprehension and development of Egyptian mythology. The series of the first arrangement of the gods mentioned by Herodotus and Manetho, which in modern investigations has been differently arranged in its details by all scholars, is at length placed beyond all doubt, and certainly differs in all essential points from what has been hitherto everywhere adopted. I will briefly allude here to another fact, important both in the history of mythology as well as in a purely historical point of view, and which was elicited by an attentive investigation of the monuments. The direct succession of the reigning royal family was interrupted, towards the end of the 18th Dynasty. Through the monuments we became acquainted with several kings of this period, who were not afterwards admitted in the legitimate lists, but were regarded as unauthorised cotemporary or intermediate kings. Among these Amenophis IV. is to be particularly noted, who, during a very active reign of twelve years, endeavoured to accomplish a complete reformation of all secular and spiritual institutions. He built a royal capital for himself in Central Egypt, near the present Tel-el-Amarna, introduced new offices and usages, and aimed at no less a thing than to abolish the whole religious system of the Egyptians, which had hitherto subsisted, and to place in its stead the single worship of the Sun. In all the inscriptions composed during his reign, there is not one Egyptian god mentioned except the Sun; even in other words the sacred symbols were avoided, e. g. the word mut, mother, Coptic ⲙⲁⲧ, was no longer written as usual with the hawk 𓅐𓏏, the symbol of the goddess Mut, but 𓐝𓏏, MT, with the universal phonetic signs. Indeed, the former gods and their worship were persecuted to such an extent by this king, that he erased all the gods’ names, with the single exception of the Sun-god Ra, from every monument that was accessible throughout the country, and because his own name, Amenophis, contained the name of Ammon, he changed it into Bech-en-aten, “Worshipper of the Sun’s disk.” Therefore the fact, which has often been previously remarked, that at one particular period the name of Ammon was intentionally destroyed, forms only part of an event which had a much wider influence, and which unexpectedly reveals to us the religious movements of those times.
The History of Art has never yet been considered in the point of view from which Egypt, and all that concerns it, is now regarded. This necessarily formed a particular object of our expedition, and most directly gained by the increased chronological knowledge we obtained concerning the monuments. For the first time we were able to pursue all its branches during the old Egyptian Monarchy, previous to the invasion of the Hyksos, and accordingly to extend both it and the history of Egypt about sixteen centuries farther back, and some tens of years lower down in time. The different epochs of Egyptian art now first appeared clear and distinct, each marked by its peculiar character, intimately connected with the general development of the people. They had so frequently been misunderstood, that no one believed in their existence; they were lost in the general uniformity. I must mention, as one of the most important facts connected with this, that we found innumerable instances on unfinished monuments of three different canons of proportions of the human body; one belonging to the most ancient Pharaonic Monarchy, another later than the 12th Dynasty, when Thebes first began to flourish; a third, which appears at first in the time of the Psammetichi, with an entire alteration in the Principle of the division, and which remained unaltered till the time of the Roman emperors. The last is the same which Diodorus expressly mentions in his first book. Among the separate branches of Egyptian art, Architecture, which was almost unnoticed by the French-Tuscan expedition, was with us peculiarly attended to, by the extremely careful and circumspect labours of our architect Erbkam. This was befitting the important position occupied by this particular branch, in which grandeur, that element of art, peculiarly belonging to the Egyptian beyond all other nations, was capable of being developed, and has developed itself to the utmost. The study of the sculpture and paintings devolved upon the other artists who accompanied us, and the ability and fidelity with which they fulfilled their task must be recognised by every one. The Egyptian style associated with the limited views characteristic of the infancy of art, nevertheless possesses a highly-cultivated ideal element, which must be acknowledged by every one. The genius of Greece could never have bestowed on art such a marked character, indicative of a period of prosperous liberty, if it had not received it as a severe, chaste, and carefully nurtured child from the Egyptians. The principal task of the history of Egyptian art is to point out wherein consisted this cultivation of art, peculiar to the Egyptians, above all the primitive nations of Asia.
In the next place, Egyptian archæology, in the widest sense of the word, claimed a large portion of our time and attention: an extensive field, already examined, both successfully and diligently, by Wilkinson and Rosellini, which they were enabled to do by means of the inexhaustible number of separate objects belonging to every-day life, still in preservation, and by the representations of them, which are found in all directions, far surpassing any other ancient remains.
On that account it was still more necessary to make a stricter investigation, and to regard it from a higher point of view, rather than accumulate a greater number of individual things, that notwithstanding obtruded themselves on all sides, and which, besides, we collected in large quantities, as material to work upon.
Lastly, Geography and Chorography, which travellers are especially expected to promote, required to be more peculiarly prosecuted. We must particularly mention here, that besides the peculiar investigation of the Pyramid fields at Memphis, and in the Faiûm, which have been already alluded to, our records of the ruins of towns, and ancient monuments in the Nile country, as far up as Sennâr, are more perfect and exact than any hitherto made. With regard to the modern geographical names, which must always be viewed in comparison with the ancient, I have been most particular in obtaining the Arabic names—at least, throughout the district we traversed—in order to counteract, as far as lay in my power, the insufferable confusion in the names which are marked down. During the journey, I made special maps for the individual portions of the eastern mountains of Egypt and the peninsula of Sinai, and I collected geographical accounts from travellers concerning some remote districts, which we did not enter, and which are but little known; and I had geographical drawings made of them. Our investigations of the historical places in the peninsula of Sinai have been already alluded to. The discovery, mentioned above, of the most ancient Nilometer at Semneh, has added, in a remarkable degree, also to the history of the physical condition of the Nile valley; since it is quite evident, from the water just above the second Cataract, standing at that time twenty-two feet higher than at present, and the height of the water in the Thebaid being contemporaneously twelve to fifteen feet lower, that the fall of the Nile in the intermediate country was thirty-five feet greater in those times than it is now. But this gradual levelling of the bed of the river must have had the most decided influence on the history of the cultivation of the valley, and of the whole population; because the soil on the banks of the river in the district of Nubia, more especially owing to the considerable sinking of the water, being inaccessible to the natural overflowings, was laid dry, and could only be irrigated with great difficulty, and imperfectly, by means of artificial water-wheels.
Considerable progress was made in the knowledge of the African languages, by the investigation which I was principally enabled to make in the southern part of our journey. I inquired into and noted down as much of the grammar and vocabulary of three languages, as would enable me to give a distinct idea of them. First, Kongára, spoken at Dar-Fûr and the adjacent countries, a Central African-Negro language. Secondly, the Nuba language, which is spoken in two chief dialects, in one part of the Nubian-Nile valley and in the neighbouring countries situated to the south-west, and also appears to be derived from the interior of Africa. It had hitherto never been a written language, and I collected together for the first time a piece of written Nubian literature, for I made a Nubian Sheikh, who was perfectly familiar with the Arabic language and writing, translate the Fables of Locman, a portion of the Thousand and One Nights, and the Gospel of St. Mark, from the Arabian into the Nubian tongue, and write down besides nineteen Nubian songs, some of them in rhyme, some only rhythmical, and translate them into Arabic. Unfortunately, these precious packets, all but the Nubian gospel, were lost in Europe, with little hope of recovery. The third language investigated by me was the Beg´a, which is spoken by the Bischâri nation, who dwell between the Red Sea and the Nubian Nile. This language occupies an important position with reference to philology, since it seems to be a branch of the original Asiatic stock, of which the African offsets may be comprehended under the name of the HAMITIC languages; and is, besides, particularly interesting in our study of the monuments, because, most probably, it was once the key to decipher the ancient Ethiopian inscriptions, numbers of which were discovered by us upon the Island of Meröe, and from that place, in the Nile valley, as far down as Philæ. These inscriptions are written in simple characters, from right to left, and derive their origin from the powerful nation of the Meröitic Ethiopians, whose direct descendants we behold in the present Beg´a nations. By comparing those languages with the other languages of Africa, which are already better known, I think I shall be able to separate, according to fixed principles, these “Hamitic languages” of north and north-east Africa (which may still be referred to their native home in Asia) from the numerous other languages of this enigmatical continent; and I am now engaged in preparing these philological investigations for special publication.
I must finally mention, among the results of our journey, two collections of inscriptions. In the first place, all the Greek inscriptions in the countries we travelled through were carefully sought out, and impressions of them were taken upon paper; by which Græco-Egyptian archæology, and more particularly the learned collections of inscriptions which have lately excited such lively interest, will probably be completed, confirmed, or justified in a satisfactory manner. Secondly, in the peninsula of Sinai we made as perfect a collection as was possible of the so-called Sinaitic Inscriptions, which are found engraved on the rocks in different districts of the peninsula, but principally in the neighbourhood of the old town of Faran, at the foot of the mountain range of Serbâl, and at a resting-place of the caravans in Wadi Mokatteb, situated farther north, which is named after them.
We were only able casually to turn our attention to objects of Natural Science; nevertheless, I did not however neglect, especially during remote mountainous journeys, to collect specimens of stone and earth from the more remarkable localities. We not only visited the celebrated stone quarries in the chalk mountains of Tura, in the sandstone range of Selseleh, in the granite rocks of Assuan, and others situated in the Nile valley, but also those alabaster quarries of El Bosra, opposite Siut, which were discovered a few years ago by the Bedouins, in which last we found a rock-inscription from the commencement of the 17th Dynasty. They resemble those quarries of granite and brecciaverde at HAMMAMÂT, upon the road leading from Qeneh to the Red Sea, which have been worked from the earliest times, and also the porphyry and granite quarries at Gebel Fatireh (Mons Claudianus), and at Gebel Dochân (Mons Porphyrites), in the Arabian chain of mountains, celebrated in the Roman period. I also had an opportunity of purchasing an interesting Ethnographical and Natural History collection in Alexandria, obtained by H. Werne during Mohammed Ali’s second expedition up the Nile, which penetrated as far as the 4° N. lat., of which an account was published; and I received a valuable collection of Egyptian fishes for the Anatomical Museum in Berlin, from the celebrated French physician Clot Bey.
LETTERS FROM EGYPT AND ETHIOPIA.
DEDICATED, WITH THE PROFOUNDEST VENERATION AND GRATITUDE, TO ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT.
Letter I
On board the Oriental Steamer, the 5th of September, 1842.
All our efforts were taxed to enable us to depart on the 1st September; the delay of one day would have cost us a whole month, so it was necessary to be doubly active. A visit to Paris was indispensable, and I reached it in thirty-one hours from London; but two days were all that could be spared to procure what was requisite in the way of purchases, letters, and notes. I returned richly laden from this city, ever rich to me in interest, information, and various proofs of kindness. In London, I acquired two additional excellent travelling companions—Bonomi and Wild, who had lately determined to share in the expedition on an independent footing. The former, already well known as a traveller in Egypt and Ethiopia, not only has a thorough practical acquaintance with the mode of life in those parts, but also possesses a critical knowledge of Egyptian art, and is a master in Egyptian drawing; the latter, a young architect, full of genius, seeks with enthusiasm in the East a new field for the exercise of the rich and various gifts with which he is endowed. At length, everything was purchased, provided, and packed, and we had bid farewell to our friends. Bunsen alone, with his usual kindness, and unwearied friendship, accompanied us as far as Southampton, the place of our embarkation, where we spent the evening together.
As at other times, when landing from a stormy sea after days of rough tossing, we suddenly enjoy an almost inconceivable degree of repose in the quiet harbour, although for a long time we still feel the ground tottering beneath us, and fancy we hear the sound of the breakers, so on this occasion I experienced the same, though the case was reversed; when, after the whirl of the last days and weeks, and coming from the immense metropolis of the world, I reached the harbour, and entered the narrow, quickly traversed and surveyed, wooden house of the monotonous wilderness of the ocean. All at once there was nothing more to provide and to hasten; the long row of more than thirty chests of our baggage had vanished piece by piece into the dark hold of the ship; our cabins required no arrangement, for they could scarcely contain more than our own persons. The absence of disturbance for some time caused a new and undefined kind of disturbance: anxiety, without anything to be anxious about.
Among the passengers, I will only mention the missionary Lieder, a German by birth, returning with his English wife to Cairo. Commissioned by the English Missionary Society, he has founded and conducted a boys’ and girls’ school there, which is now to be restricted exclusively to the children of the Coptic Christians. Lieder has introduced instruction in the Coptic language into this school, and has thus restored to an honourable position that remarkable and most ancient language of the country, which, for many centuries past, has been entirely supplanted among the people by the Arabic tongue. It is true that the Holy Scriptures still exist in the country in the Coptic tongue, and are even used in public worship, but they are only chanted as psalms, and are no longer understood.
We started from Southampton on the 1st September, about ten o’clock in the morning. The wind was against us, and therefore we did not reach Falmouth till twenty-four hours afterwards, where our ship waited for the London mail, to take in the letters. We remained several hours at anchor there, in a charming bay; an old castle is situated at the entrance on either side, while in the background the town forms an extremely picturesque group. About three o’clock we again put to sea, and as there was a side-wind, it caused much sea-sickness among our party. I consider myself fortunate, that even on the most stormy voyages I have never been in this disagreeable condition, which nevertheless has something comic in it for those who are not suffering. It is a curious circumstance that the same motion which rocks the child into a sweet slumber, or which invites us to a pleasure-sail in the tossing boat, on shipboard owing to the slower time of the wide-swinging pendulum, becomes intolerable suffering, and prostrates the strongest heroes, without, however, being accompanied by any serious danger.
The following day we reached the Bay of Biscay, and with difficulty cut through the long and deep waves, which rolled out from the distant coast. On the morning of the 4th instant, Sunday, very few appeared at breakfast. About eleven o’clock, in spite of the violent motion, we assembled for divine service. The English flag, as the most sacred cloth in the ship, was spread over the pulpit desk; Herr Lieder preached, simply and well. About four o’clock we saw the Spanish coast for the first time, in faint, misty outline. The nearer we approached it, the waves gradually fell, for the wind blew off shore. Air, sky, and sea were incomparably beautiful. Cape Finisterre, and the adjoining head-lands, became more clear. We descried several small sailing-vessels along the coast; and all kinds of sea-fowl swarmed round the ship. By degrees, the whole company, even the ladies, collected on deck. The sea became as smooth as the clearest mirror, and we kept the Spanish coast in sight the whole afternoon. The sun descended magnificently into the sea; the evening star was soon followed by the whole host of the heavenly stars, and a glorious night wrapt around us.
But now the most splendid spectacle presented itself that I have ever seen at sea. The ocean began to lighten up, all the crests of the breaking waves glowed with an emerald-green fire, and a brilliant greenish-white waterfall fell from the paddle-wheels of the vessel, which left in its long wake a broad, light streak in the dark sea. The sides of the vessel, and our downward gazing faces, were lighted up as bright as moonlight, and I was able to read print without any difficulty by this water-fire. When the illuminating matter, which, according to Ehrenberg’s researches, proceeds from infusorial animalculæ, was most intense, we saw flames dancing over the sea, as far as the coast, so that it seemed as if we were sailing through a more richly-starred sky than that which was above us. I have frequently observed this illumination of the sea on the Mediterranean also, but never with such extraordinary brilliancy as on this occasion. The spectacle was quite like enchantment.
Suddenly I observed between the waves new living streaks of fire, which radiated from the vessel like two gigantic serpents, and, judging by the proportions of the ship, were at least from sixty to eighty feet long; they moved in a deceptive manner, in large windings beside the vessel, crossed the waves, dipped into the foam of the paddle-wheels, reappeared, retreated, hurried forward, and finally vanished in the distance. For a long time I could not explain this phenomenon. I thought of the old tales, so frequently repeated, of the huge sea-serpents which have been seen from time to time. Nothing could more closely resemble what was here before us. At length it occurred to me that it might however only be fishes running a race with the vessel, and, by their rapid movements, brushing the surface of the luminous sea, they might produce the long streaks of light behind them. Nevertheless, the ocular demonstration remained as deceptive as before; I could discover nothing of the dark fishes, nor determine their size; but I at length consoled myself by my own conjecture.
Letter II
Alexandria, the 23rd of September, 1842.
I put my last letter into the post in Gibraltar, on the 7th September, where we employed the few hours which were granted us in viewing the citadel. The African continent lay before us, a light streak on the horizon. Beneath me, apes were clambering on the rocks, the only ones in Europe which live in a wild state, and on that account they are left unmolested. In Malta, which we reached on the 11th September, we found the painter Frey, from Basle, whom I had known at Rome. He told me first, by word of mouth, that he desired to join in the expedition, and had arrived some days before from Naples. We were compelled to wait nearly three days for the post from Marseilles. This gave us at least an opportunity to visit the wonders of the island; namely, the gigantic buildings discovered, a few years back, near La Valetta, and to make some purchases. Through Lieder, I became acquainted with Gobat, who has hitherto managed the Maltese station of the English Missionary Society, but is now waiting for a new destination, as pecuniary circumstances compel the society to give up this station entirely. It gave me great pleasure to make the acquaintance of this distinguished person.[2]
From Malta we were accompanied by the missionary Isenberg, who, like Gobat, had lived for a long time in Abyssinia, and is also well known to linguists by his grammar of the Amharic language. A young girl from Basle was under his protection—Rosina Dietrich, the bride of the missionary Krapf, who has married her here, and is now going to return with her and his colleagues, Isenberg and Mühleisen, to the English missionary station in Schoa, by the next Indian steamer. He was married in the English chapel, and I was present as a witness at the ceremony, which was performed with simplicity and feeling.
On our arrival, on the 18th September, we found Erbkam, Ernest Weidenbach, and Franke, already here. They had been waiting for us several days.
Mohammed Ali had put to sea with the fleet, as he was impatiently expecting the arrival of Sami Bey, who was to bring him intelligence of the desired reduction of tribute; in place of which, he had received the appointment of Grand Vizier.
The Swedish Consul-General, d’Anastasi, who as the representative of our Consul-General Von Wagner, still absent, manages the affairs of Prussia, and who enters with zeal into all our interests, presented us to-day to the Viceroy, and we have just returned from the audience. He expressed himself much pleased with the vases, which I delivered to the Pascha in the name of our Sovereign, and he felt himself still more honoured by the King’s letter, of which he immediately ordered a written translation to be made, and perused it with great attention in our presence, and desired that I should be informed that he would give me the answer when we should again leave the country. We were received, and dismissed standing; coffee was handed to us, and he showed us other attentions, some of which were afterwards carefully explained to me by d’Anastasi. Boghos Bey, his confidential minister, was the only one present, and remained standing all the time. Mohammed Ali appeared to be cheerful, and youthful in his actions and conversation; no debility was visible in the features and flashing eye of the old man of seventy-three. He spoke with interest of his expeditions up the Nile, and assured us he intended to repeat them, till he should have found the sources of the White River. On my inquiring about his Museum in Cairo, he replied, that it certainly had not hitherto been very successful, but that frequently, when rapid progress was expected in his enterprises, unjust claims were made on him relative to these matters in Europe; since he was compelled first to obtain a basis and foundation, which, with us, had long been prepared. I only cursorily alluded to our excavations; and in the course of conversation assumed that he had granted us permission to make them; this I am soon to receive in due form.[3]
Letter III
Cairo, the 16th October, 1842.
We were detained almost fourteen days in Alexandria. The whole time was spent in preparations for our farther journey. I saw the Pascha several times again, and found him always favourably inclined towards our expedition. But we had gained little in a scientific point of view. We visited Pompey’s Pillar, which has nevertheless no connection with Pompey, but, as we learn by the Greek inscription on the base, was placed there by the Prefect Publius, in honour of the Emperor Diocletian. The blocks of the foundation are partly fragments of older buildings; the Royal Ring of the second Psammeticus could still be recognised upon one of them.
The two obelisks, of which the one still standing is called Cleopatra’s Needle, are very much destroyed on the sides which are exposed to the weather, and in part have become totally illegible. They were erected by THUTMOSIS III., in the sixteenth century before Christ; at a later period RAMSES MIAMUN has inscribed his name, and still later, on the outermost borders of the four sides, another king, who proved to be hitherto wholly unknown, and was therefore gladly greeted by me. I must also mention an interesting collection of objects of every sort connected with ethnography and natural history, which was made by Werne, a native of Prussia, during the second expedition of the Pascha up the Nile, as far as the White River, in lands till then unknown, and which a few months previously had been conveyed to Alexandria.[4] It appeared to me of such value, and to be so unique in its kind, that I have purchased it for our Museums. While we were still there, it was packed up, ready to be despatched. I think it will be welcome in Berlin.
At length the Bujurldis (Firman) of the Pascha was ready, and we hastened to quit Alexandria. We embarked the same day that I received it (the 30th September), on the Mahmudieh canal. Darkness surprised us before we had accomplished this first difficult departure. It was nine o’clock before we drove off from our hotel, on the extensive and beautiful Frank-square, in two carriages belonging to M. d’Anastasi, preceded by the customary runners with torches. The gate was opened at the watchword that had been given to us; our baggage had already been conveyed to the boat some hours previously on camels, so that we were able to depart very soon after our entrance into the roomy vessel, which I had hired in the morning. The Nile, which we entered at Atfeh, had tolerably high waves, as the wind was strong and unfavourable. The usual mode of navigation here, is with two pointed sails, which rise upwards like the wings of a bee; these are easily beaten down, by every violent gust of wind, not without danger, especially in the dark. I therefore granted the sailors permission to stop every stormy night.
The following day, the 2nd of October, we landed at SA EL HAGER to visit the ruins of ancient SAIS, the city of the Psammetici, famous by its temple to Minerva. The circular walls of the town, built of bricks of Nile earth, and the deserted ruins of the houses, are alone extant; there are no remains of stone buildings with inscriptions. We paced the circumference of the city, and made a simple plan of the locality. The Acropolis was situated to the north-west of the town, which is even now marked by tolerably high mounds of rubbish. We spent the night at NEKLEH. I have got the great maps of the “Description de l’Egypte” beside me, on which we were able to trace almost every step of our excursions. We have hitherto found it almost everywhere to be depended upon.
The 3rd of October we landed on the western bank, to inspect the remains of the old Rosetta canal, and spent almost the whole afternoon till sunset in examining the ruins of an old town near NAHARIEH. No walls are now visible, only mounds of rubbish, yet we found in the houses of the modern town several stones with inscriptions, chiefly built into door-sills, which had originally belonged to a temple of King Psammeticus I. and APRIES (Hophre). The next night we stopped on the western bank at TEIRIEH, and landed there the following morning to search for some ruins, an hour distant from the bank, but from which we obtained nothing. The Libyan desert here for the first time advances quite close to the Nile, and presented us with a new and deeply impressive sight.
On the following morning, we first saw the Great Pyramids of Memphis, rising above the horizon; I could not for a long time take my eyes off them. We still continued to sail on the Rosetta arm; about mid-day we reached the so-called Cowsbelly, where the Nile divides into its two principal arms. Now for the first time we were able to survey the noble, wonderful river in its whole magnitude, which with its fertilising and sweet-tasting water, influences the life and manners of the inhabitants on its banks like no other river in the world. It usually attains its greatest height about the beginning of October. But this year an inundation has occurred, such as has not been remembered for generations past. A breach in the dams is dreaded, which after the great murrain, that is said to have carried off up to the last week forty thousand head of cattle, would cause Egypt to be afflicted a second time this year.
About five o’clock in the evening we arrived at BULAQ, the harbour of Cairo. We rode at once from the harbour to the town, and made arrangements for a considerable stay. By-the-by, when we say CAIRO, and the French LA CAIRE, it proceeds from a pure error in language. The town is never called anything by the Arabs now, but MASR, and the country the same; that is the old Semetic name, which is more easily pronounced by us in the dual termination Mis’raim. It was only in the tenth century, when the present city was founded, that the modern Masr, by the addition EL QAHIREH, that is “the victorious,” was distinguished from the earlier MASR EL ATIQEH, the present Old Cairo. The Italians then omitted the h, which they could not pronounce, mistook the Arabic article EL for their masculine IL, and thus by its termination also, stamped the whole word as masculine.
It was just the commencement of the Musulmans’ holy fasting month, the Ramadan, during which they neither take food, nor “drink smoke or water” the whole day, and receive no visits, but only begin the whole business of life after sunset; thus completely changing day and night, which, on account of our Arabian servants, causes us much inconvenience. Our Kawass (the Pascha’s guard of honour that had been given us), which had missed the time of our departure from Alexandria, established itself here. As our Prussian vice-consul is out of health, I applied to the Austrian consul, M. Champion, to whom I had been warmly recommended by Ehrenberg, with respect to our being presented to the representatives of the Pascha at this place. He received us with the greatest politeness and anxiety to serve us, and has obtained for us everywhere a good reception. On my official visits, which, on account of the Ramadan, were necessarily made about eight o’clock in the evening, I was usually accompanied by Erbkam and Bonomi. Our torch-bearers ran before us, then followed on asses, first the Dragoman of the consul, and our Pascha’s Kawass, then we ourselves, in stately procession. We rode almost across the whole town to the Citadel, through the narrow streets, which were filled with Arabs, and picturesquely illuminated by our torches, there we first paid a visit to Abbas Pascha,[5] a grandson of Mehemet Ali. He is governor of Cairo, but rarely there. From him we went to Scherif Pascha, his representative, and then to the minister of war, Ahmet Pascha. We were everywhere received with great courtesy.
On the day after our arrival, I received a diploma as honorary member of the older Egyptian Society, from which the younger one, which had already forwarded to London the same invitation to me, has separated. Both held meetings during the first days after our arrival, but I was only able to attend one of them, in which an interesting paper was read by Krapf, on certain nations in Central Africa. The accounts were given him by a native of the country of Enarea, who had travelled into the country of the Doko on mercantile business, and describes the people there very much as Herodotus describes the Libyan dwarf nation, according to the account of the Nasamonians, namely, as composed entirely of little people, about the size of children from ten to twelve years old. We might almost imagine that they were speaking of apes. As the geographical notices of the hitherto wholly unknown land of the Doko are also interesting, I had the whole paper copied, in order to send it along with the small map which belongs to it, to our venerated Ritter.[6]
On the 13th of October we made our first excursion from this place to the ruins of HELIOPOLIS, the biblical On, whence Joseph took his wife Asnath, the daughter of a priest. Nothing remains of this highly-praised city, which prided itself in possessing, next to Thebes, the most learned body of priests, but the walls, which now resemble great ramparts of earth, and an obelisk still erect, and perhaps in its original site. The peculiar interest of this obelisk is, that it was erected by King SESURTESEN I. in the Old Monarchy, about B.C. 2300, and is by far the most ancient of all known obelisks; for the broken one in the Fayoum at Crocodilopolis, which bears the name of the same king, is rather a lengthened stele, or tablet, in the form of an obelisk. Boghos Bey has received a present of the ground on which the obelisk stands, and has laid out a garden round it. The flowers of the garden have attracted a multitude of bees, and they have been unable to find a more commodious habitation than in the deep and sharply-cut hieroglyphics of the obelisk. Within the space of a twelvemonth, they have covered the inscriptions of the four sides to such a degree, that a great portion of them have now become quite illegible. They had been, however, previously published, and we had little difficulty in our examination, because three sides bear the same inscription, and that on the fourth, also, differs but little.
Yesterday, the 15th October, was our king’s birthday, and I had selected this day for the first visit to the Great Pyramids. We would there, with a few friends, commemorate our King and our Fatherland in a joyous festival. We invited the Austrian consul, Champion; the Prussian consul, Bokty; our learned countryman, Dr. Pruner, and Messrs. Lieder, Isenberg, Mühleisen, and Krapf to join our party, some of whom however, were to our regret, prevented from attending.
The morning was beautiful beyond description, fresh and festive. We rode in a long procession through the yet quiet city, and through the green avenues and gardens which are now laid out before it. Wherever, almost, that we met with new and well carried out works, Ibrahim Pascha was named to us as their originator. He seems to be doing much in all parts of Egypt for the embellishment and improvement of the country.
It is impossible to describe the scene that met our view when we emerged from the avenues of date-trees and acacias; the sun rose on the left behind the Moqattam hills, and illuminated the summits of the Pyramids in front, which lay before us in the plain like gigantic rock crystals. All were overpowered, and felt the solemn influence of the splendour and grandeur of this morning scene. At Old Cairo we were transported across the Nile to the village of Gizeh, from which the largest Pyramids are called HARAM EL GIZEH. From this spot, in the dry season, one may ride over to the Pyramids, by a straight road, in an hour, or little more. But as the inundation now stands at its highest point, we were compelled to make a great circuit on long dams; we came nearly as far up as Saqâra, and only reached the foot of the greatest Pyramid at the end of five hours and a half.
The unexpected length of the ride gave us an appetite for the simple breakfast which, in order to strengthen us for the ascent of the greatest Pyramid, we partook forthwith in one of the old sepulchral chambers; these had been here hewn in the rock, somewhere about five thousand years ago, and are now inhabited by some Bedouins. Meantime, a spacious tent, with decorations of various colours, which I hired in Cairo, had arrived. I had it pitched on the northern side of the Pyramid, and the great Prussian royal standard, the black eagle with the golden sceptre, the crown and the blue sword on a white ground, which our artists had themselves, during the last few days, sketched, stitched, and fastened to a high pole, was planted before the door of the tent.
About thirty Bedouins had, in the meanwhile, gathered around us, and waited for the moment when we should ascend the Pyramids, in order to raise us, with their strong brown arms, up the steps, which are between three and four feet high. Scarcely had the signal for departure been given, than immediately each of us was surrounded by several Bedouins, who dragged us up the rough, steep path to the summit, as in a whirlwind. A few minutes later, and our flag was unfurled on the summit of the oldest and highest of human works that is known, and we greeted the Prussian eagle with three joyous cheers to our king. Flying towards the south, the eagle turned his crowned head towards our home in the north, from which a refreshing wind blew, and diverted the hot rays of the mid-day sun from off us. We also looked homewards, and each one thought aloud, or silently in his heart, of those who loving, and beloved, he had left behind.
The panoramic view of the landscape spread out at our feet next riveted our attention. On the one side the Nile valley, a wide sea of overflowed waters, intersected by long serpentine dams; here and there broken by villages rising above its surface like islands, and by cultivated promontories filling the whole plain of the valley that extended to the opposite Moqattam hills, on whose most northerly point the citadel of Cairo rises above the town stretched out at their base. On the other side, the Libyan desert, a still more wonderful sea of sandy plains and barren rocky hills, boundless, colourless, noiseless, enlivened by no creature, no plants, no trace of the presence of man, not even by tombs; and between both, the ruined Necropolis, whose general position and simple outline lay spread out clearly and distinctly as on a map.
What a spectacle, and what recollections did it call forth! When Abraham came to Egypt for the first time, he saw these very Pyramids, which had been already built many centuries before his coming. In the plain before us lay ancient Memphis, the residence of the kings on whose tombs we were then standing; there dwelt Joseph, and ruled the land under one of the most powerful and wisest Pharaohs of the newly restored Monarchy. Farther away, to the left of the Moqattam hills, where the fruitful low ground extends on the eastern arm of the Nile, beyond Heliopolis, distinguished by its Obelisk, begins the blest region of Goshen, out of which Moses led his people to the Syrian desert. It would not, indeed, be difficult from our position to recognise that ancient fig-tree on the road to Heliopolis, at Matarîeh, under whose shade, according to the tradition of the country, Mary rested with the infant Christ. How many thousand pilgrims of all nations have since visited these wonders of the world down to ourselves, who, the youngest in time, are yet but the predecessors of many other thousands who will succeed us, ascend these Pyramids, and contemplate them with astonishment. I will not describe any further the thoughts and feelings which agitated me during these moments. There, at the goal of the wishes of many years, and at the same time at the commencement of our expedition; there, at the summit of the Cheops-Pyramid, to which the first link of our whole monumental historical inquiry—not merely for the history of Egypt, but for that of the world—is immoveably attached; there, where I looked down upon the wonderful field of tombs, from which the Moses’-wand of science now calls forth the shadows of the ancient dead, and causes them to pass before the mirror of history, in the order of their time and rank, with their names and titles, and with all their peculiarities, customs, and surrounding accompaniments.
After I had taken an exact survey of the neighbouring tombs, with a view to select some points for future excavations, we once more descended to the entrance of the Pyramid, and, providing ourselves with lights, entered, like miners, the steeply sloping shaft with some guides, and reached the gallery, and so-called King’s Chamber, by paths already familiar to me by drawings. We admired the infinitely fine seams of the enormous blocks, and examined the quality of the stones of the passages and chambers. In the spacious hall, whose floor, walls, and ceiling, are entirely built of granite, and, therefore, return a metallic-sounding echo, we sang our Prussian hymn, which sounded so powerful and so solemn that our guides afterwards told the remaining Bedouins that we had selected the innermost part of the Pyramid to perform divine service and utter a loud general prayer. We now visited also the so-called Chamber of the Queen, and then quitted the Pyramid, reserving the view of the chambers which were more difficult of access for a future and longer visit.
Meantime, our orientally-ornamented tent had been arranged, and a dinner was prepared within it, seasoned by the importance of the festival, of which only Prussians partook, with the exception of our two English companions. It need hardly be told that our first toast on this occasion, also, was to the king and his household, and it required no great eloquence to inspire all hearts.
The remainder of the day passed in cheerful, festive, and tender reminiscences and conversation, till the time for our departure had arrived. We were still obliged to wait a quarter of an hour after sunset to give our servants, our mule-drivers, and other Arabian attendants, time to eat their frugal meal, as, on account of the Ramadan, in spite of the heat and labours of the day, they had not yet tasted anything. Then the clear, full moon guided us in the cool and silent night across the sea of sand and waters, through villages and palm-groves back to the city, which we did not reach before midnight.
Letter IV
At the foot of the largest Pyramid, the 2nd Jan., 1843.
Still always here! in full activity since the 9th November, and perhaps for several weeks longer in the new year. But yet, how could I suspect from the accounts that have hitherto been given by travellers what a harvest we had to gather on this spot; here, on the oldest scene of all determinable chronological human history. It is strange how little this spot has been examined, though it has been the most frequently visited in Egypt. I will not, however, quarrel with our predecessors, as we reap the fruits of their neglect. I have rather been compelled to restrain our desire to see more of this land of wonders, as we shall perhaps have to discharge half of our whole task on this spot. Two tombs, besides the Pyramids, are conspicuously marked on the best of the earlier maps. Rosellini has only accurately examined one tomb; and Champollion says, in his letters: “Il y a peu à faire ici, et lorsqu’on aura copié des scènes de la vie domestique, sculptées dans un tombeau, je regagnerai nos embarcations.” We have given forty-five tombs on our accurate topographical plan of the whole necropolis, whose occupants have become known to me by their inscriptions, and altogether I have recorded eighty-two, which seemed worthy of notice, by their inscriptions or by other peculiarities.[7] Few of them belong to later times; almost all of them were built during, or shortly after, the erection of the great Pyramids, and therefore afford us an invaluable series of dates for the knowledge of the oldest determinable civilisation of the human race. The architecture of that period, about which I formerly could only offer conjectures,[8] is now clearly developed before me. We have thus early presented to us almost all the different component parts of architecture; sculptures of entire figures, of all sizes, in alto-relievo and basso-relievo, are presented in astonishing numbers. The style is very marked, and beautifully executed, but it is evident that the Egyptians of that time did not yet possess that canon of proportions which we find prevailing at a later period.[9]
The painting on a very fine coating of lime is often beautiful beyond conception, and is sometimes preserved as fresh and perfect as if it had been done yesterday. The representations on the walls chiefly contain scenes from the life of the deceased, and appear especially intended to place before the eyes of the spectator his wealth in cattle, fish, game, boats, domestics, &c. We thus become familiar with all the details of his private life. The numerous inscriptions describe or designate these scenes, or they exhibit the often widely-branching family of the deceased, and all his titles and offices, so that I could almost compose a court and state calendar of King Cheops, or Chephren. The most splendid tombs or rock-sepulchres belonged principally to the princes, their relatives, or the highest official persons under the kings beside whose Pyramids they are laid; and not unfrequently, I have found the tombs of father, son, and grandson, even great grandson, so that whole pedigrees of those distinguished families, who, above 5000 years ago, formed the nobility of the land, are brought to light. The most beautiful of the tombs, which, with many others, I myself discovered beneath the sand, which here buries all things, belongs to a prince of the family of King Cheops.
I am now employing daily from forty to sixty people in excavations and similar works. I have also made them dig in front of the great Sphinx, to disclose the small temple which is situated between its paws, and to expose the colossal stele of a single block of granite, eleven feet high and seven feet broad, which forms the back wall of the little temple, and which is still covered up with sand to nearly its entire height. It is one of the few monuments here from the times of the great Pharaohs of the New Monarchy, after the expulsion of the Hyksos; I have had a plaster cast taken of it.
The Egyptian winter is not always so spring-like as is sometimes imagined in Europe. About sunrise, when all hasten to their work, we have already had it +5° R. (43¼ Fahr.), so that the sketchers could hardly use their fingers.
The winter season began here with a scene which will always be vividly remembered by me. I had ridden out to the excavations, when seeing a large black cloud approaching, I sent a servant to the tents, to take care of them, but as it began to rain slightly, I soon rode after him myself. Shortly after my arrival a storm of wind began; I therefore ordered the cords of the tents to be secured, but soon a violent shower of rain came in addition, which alarmed all our Arabs, and drove them into the rock-tomb, in which is our kitchen. Erbkam and Franke were the only ones of our own party here. Suddenly the storm became a regular hurricane, such as I had never witnessed in Europe, and a hailstorm came down on us, which almost turned the day into night. I had the greatest trouble to drive our Arabs out of the grotto, that they might bring our things to the rock-tombs, where it was dry, as every moment we might expect the overthrow of the tents. And it was not long before first our common tent fell down, and when I had hastened from that into my own, in order to hold it from the inside, this also broke down above me. After I had crawled out, I found that my things were tolerably well covered by the tent, so that for the present I might leave them alone, to prevent a still greater danger. Our tents, protected from the worst winds, the north and west, lay in a depression of the valley, towards which the plateau of the Pyramids inclines. From that place I suddenly saw a rapid mountain torrent precipitating, like a gigantic serpent on its certain prey, upon our encampment, already half destroyed and beaten into the sand. The principal stream first dashed towards the great tent; another arm threatened mine, but did not however quite reach it. Everything, however, which had been floated out of our tents by the heavy rain was carried off by both streams, which united below the tents, and was borne a hundred steps farther into a deep hollow behind the Sphinx, where a great lake, which fortunately had no outlet, formed itself in a moment.
Now picture to yourself this scene! Our tents shattered to the ground by the storms of rain and hail, between two mountain torrents, which at once dug out a channel for themselves in the sandy ground, in several places six feet deep, and carried down with them into the muddy, foam-covered, slimy lake, our books, drawings, sketches, linen, instruments of all kinds, even our levers and iron crows, in short everything they laid hold on. In addition to this, we ourselves, with dripping clothes, without hats, securing the heavier articles, pursuing the lighter ones, wading up to the waist in the stream or lake, to fish out what the sand had not yet swallowed, and all this the work of a quarter of an hour, at whose expiration the sun forthwith shone again, and proclaimed the end of this deluge scene by a splendid and brilliant rainbow.
It was difficult to see at once what we had lost, and where we had to begin, to bring things again into some order. Both the Weidenbachs and Frey had gazed, from the tombs where they were working, upon the whole scene, as a magnificent natural spectacle, not suspecting what we had experienced here, till I sent for them to assist us immediately in preparing for the approaching night. For several days we continued to fish and dig for our things. Many were lost, much had become useless; the greater part of what was not enclosed in chests and trunks bore more or less traces of this flood. After all, however, nothing essential was destroyed. I had first placed in safety the great portfolios, with my manuscripts and books; in short, a few days afterwards, the whole affair only seemed to me a remarkable picture, which I should be sorry to forget, without leaving any disagreeable consequences behind it.
Since then, we have often had to suffer from violent winds, which sometimes fill the air for several days together with sand, to such a degree, as to be annoying to the lungs; it entirely prevents painting with colours, and covers the drawing and writing-paper incessantly with a most disagreeable and constantly renewed coat of dust. This fine sand penetrates all our clothes, enters every box, even those which close most perfectly, fills nose, ears, and hair, and is the unavoidable ingredient of all food, solid and liquid.
5th January.—On the evening of the first Christmas holiday, I surprised my companions by a great fire, which I had caused to be lighted on the summit of the highest Pyramid. The flame illuminated both the other Pyramids splendidly, as well as the whole field of tombs, and shone quite across the valley as far as Cairo. That was indeed a Christmas Pyramid! I only let Abeken into the secret, who, with his constantly cheerful temper, and his intellectual and instructive conversation, had happily joined us on the 10th December. With his assistance I then prepared a special Christmas-tree for the following day, in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid. We planted a young palm-tree in the sarcophagus of the ancient king, and adorned it with lights, and small presents, which I had ordered from the town for us children of the desert. St. Sylvester must have his share of honours also. At twelve o’clock on New-year’s Eve immense flames rose simultaneously at midnight from the three great Pyramids, and proclaimed the changes of the Christian year, far and wide, to the Islamite provinces at their base.
I consider it to be a useful mental regimen to our party that their tedious and monotonous labours, more especially those of our artists, should be relieved not by the weekly holiday of Sunday only, but also as often as there are opportunities, by cheerful festivities and agreeable diversions. Nor has the slightest discord hitherto disturbed the happy disposition and the good-humour of our confederation, which daily acquires fresh elasticity, both from the abundance of new impressions that we receive, and from the mutual reciprocation of the different natures and talents, as by overcoming the manifold difficulties and hardships of this Bedouin life itself.
You may judge of the variety of the elements of which our assembled party is composed, by the Babel of languages in which we continually move; the English language is competently represented by our companions, Wild and Bonomi; French and Italian serve for our intercourse with the authorities, with strangers and Levantine interpreters. We give orders, eat, and travel, in Arabic, and we reflect, talk, sing, and live, in good German. But during the day we usually all live separate, and uninterruptedly each at his own work. We take our coffee before sunrise, and our dinner after sunset; and breakfast during work. Thus our draughtsmen have already been enabled to supply our swelling portfolios with a hundred great folio sheets, cleanly executed, partly in pencil, partly in colours.
Letter V
The Pyramids of Gizeh, 17th January, 1843.
The inscription which was composed in celebration of the king’s birthday has now become a stone monumental tablet, in the fashion of the old steles and Proskynemata,[10] and its contents are as follows; the nearer, indeed, it approaches the manner of the Egyptians, the less appropriate is it in German:
“Thus speak the servants of the King, whose name is the SUN AND ROCK OF PRUSSIA, Lepsius the scribe, Erbkam the architect, the Brothers Weidenbach the painters, Frey the painter, Franke the moulder, Bonomi the sculptor, Wild the architect: All hail to the Eagle, THE PROTECTOR OF THE CROSS, to the KING THE SUN AND ROCK OF PRUSSIA, to the Son of the Sun,[11] who freed his Fatherland, Frederick William the Fourth, the Philopator, the Father of his Country, the Gracious One, the Favourite of Wisdom and History, the Guardian of the Rhine, whom Germany has chosen, the Dispenser of Life. May the Most high God grant the King, and his Consort, the Queen Elizabeth, the Rich in Life, the Philometor, the Mother of her Country, the Gracious One, an ever new and long life on Earth, and a blessed habitation in Heaven through all Eternity. In the year of our Saviour, 1842, in the tenth month, on the fifteenth day, on the forty-seventh Birthday of his Majesty, on the Pyramid of King Cheops; in the third year, in the fifth month, on the ninth day of the reign of his Majesty; in the year 3164 from the commencement of the Sothis period under the King Menepthes.”
We left behind us the hieroglyphic inscription engraved on stone and painted with oil colour, occupying a space five feet broad and four feet high. The stone, specially polished and prepared for the purpose, is placed at a considerable height near the entrance into the Pyramid of Cheops.
It seemed to me fitting, that while the members of the Prussian expedition dedicated this tablet to the much-honoured Prince by whom they were sent hither, they should at the same time, for the sake of future travellers, leave behind them some traces of their activity on this field of Pyramids, where it was reserved for them to gather together the rich materials for the first chapter of the Scientific History of Nations.
Do not, however, believe that these are the important works which detain us here so long. Our journey has this advantage over previous ones—that spots like this are entitled to occupy us until they have been thoroughly ransacked. We already know that even the gigantic and magnificent ruins of the Theban plain can reveal nothing which can equal in interest the Memphitic times of the Old Monarchy.
We must, indeed, one day depart; but it will even then be with the conviction that we leave an infinite amount of interesting materials behind, which might still be obtained. I had already resolved on our departure several days ago, when suddenly a series of tombs, different in architecture, and in the style of the figures and hieroglyphics, with other titles, and besides, as was to be expected, with other kings’ names, again disclosed a new epoch.
It is still by no means conclusive how much has been gained in an historical point of view, or, at any rate, it is but dimly discerned, I was, however, in the right when, even in Europe, I proposed to reconstruct the 3rd Dynasty from the monuments. I have not yet found a single Shield which could be safely placed before the 4th Dynasty. It appears that the builders of the great Pyramids desired to assert their rights, to having formed the commencement of monumental history, although it is as clear as day that they were not the first to build and to inscribe their monuments. We have even now found many kings’ names hitherto unknown, and variations of other names; thus:
𓍹𓂓𓂓𓇋𓍺 KEKA.
𓍹𓅃𓇋𓂓𓅱𓍺 HERAKU.
𓍹𓅱𓄊𓋴𓂓𓆑𓍺 USESKEF.
𓍹𓆛𓈖𓇋𓍺 ANA.
The name which I had hitherto read AMCHURA, in the detailed and painted inscriptions, which throw no inconsiderable light on the figurative meaning of the hieroglyphical images, exhibits a decidedly different sign from the well-known group 𓇋𓌳𓄪𓐍𓅱 AMCHU, namely [Illustration] about the pronunciation of which I am still in the dark.
There is nothing to alter with respect to the assignment of the great Pyramids. It cannot be doubted, after our researches, that the second Pyramid really belongs to Schafra (more correctly Chafra, the Chephyren of Herodotus), as the first does to Chufu (Cheops), and the third to Menkera (Mykerinos, Mencherinos). I think I have now discovered the pathway up from the valley to the second Pyramid; it led directly to its temple, past the Sphinx, but it was probably destroyed at an early period. The number also of the Pyramids continues to increase. I have found three, in ABU ROASCH, in place of one hitherto known, and two fields of tombs. Two Pyramids once stood also at ZAUIET EL ARRIAN, a village which has now almost disappeared, and there is a great field of ruins adjoining to it. The careful researches, measurements, and notes of Perring, in his beautiful work on the Pyramids, save us much time and trouble. We are thus the more able to direct our attention to the private tombs, and their hieroglyphical representations, such as are wholly wanting in the Pyramids. But nothing is yet determined, nothing is ripe for definitive arrangement, though wide prospects open before us. Our portfolios swell; many things have been cast in plaster, and among them the great stele between the paws of the colossal Sphinx from the first year of Tuthmosis IV.
Letter VI
The Pyramids of Gizeh, 17th January, 1843.
I have ordered ten camels to be here to-morrow evening, that we may start for Cairo the day after to-morrow, before sunrise, with the original monuments and plaster casts, of which we have already collected a considerable number, and we shall deposit them there, till our return from the South. This will be the commencement of our departure for Saqâra. A series of tombs, only recently discovered, belonging to the Dynasties which immediately succeed that of Cheops, has already delayed our departure once. The 5th Dynasty, which in Africanus appears as the Elephantine Collateral Dynasty, and as such was not to be expected here, now lies complete before us, and in substance such as I already had constructed it in Europe. The gaps have been filled up with three kings, whose names were hitherto unknown. At the same time, several kings, who had hitherto been merely visionary, were added to the 7th and 8th Dynasties, from which we had hitherto obtained no monumental names. The reference to the 5th Dynasty as the immediate successor of the 4th, is of invaluable importance, and would in itself alone richly repay us for our residence of many months in this place. We are still always occupied with buildings, sculptures, and inscriptions, which by the Royal Rings being more exactly defined, will be placed in a flourishing epoch of civilisation, between three and four thousand years before Christ. These numbers, hitherto so incredible, cannot be too frequently called to the remembrance of ourselves and others; the more criticism is thereby challenged, and compelled to make earnest researches on the subject, so much the better for the cause. Conviction will immediately follow in the steps of stimulated criticism, and we shall then at length approach the results which are connected with it in all branches of antiquarian research.
A roll of papers will be sent to you along with this letter, which contains several drawings, that we have taken from the sepulchral chambers in this place. They are excellent samples of the oldest Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting which the history of art can produce, and the most beautiful and best preserved that we have found on the whole field of tombs. I hope that we shall one day see these sepulchral chambers arranged in perfect order in the New Museum in Berlin. That indeed would be the fairest trophy that we could carry out of Egypt. Their transport will certainly be attended with some difficulties, for you will easily see by their dimensions that ordinary means would not in this case be sufficient. I have, therefore, as a preliminary step, written a letter direct to his Majesty the King, and inquired whether it would not be possible to send a vessel here expressly for this purpose, either next year, or at the conclusion of our expedition, with workmen and implements, to take these monuments to pieces in a more skilful manner than we are capable of doing, and to bring them, with the other collections, to Berlin.
Six of the subjoined sheets contain drawings of a sepulchral chamber, which I myself discovered beneath the sand, and whose colours are preserved almost as fresh and perfect as you see them in the drawing.[12] It belongs to a Prince Merhet, and as he was a priest of CHUFU (CHEOPS), and as he had called one of his sons CHUFU-MER-NUTERU, and possessed eight villages, the names of which are combined with that of Chufu, and as the situation of the tomb is on the western side of the Pyramid of Chufu, and the style of the representations are in perfect keeping with it, it is more than probable that Merhet was a son of Chufu, from which circumstance all the representations become still more interesting. This prince was at the same time superintendent of all the royal buildings, therefore he filled the office of “Chief of the Board of Works” (Oberhofbaurath), a high and important position at that period of most magnificent buildings, which we have frequently seen occupied by princes and royal relatives. We may therefore conjecture, that he also himself superintended the building of the largest Pyramid. Is not this alone sufficient to justify the attempt to transfer the beautifully-constructed sepulchral chamber of this princely architect to Berlin, which otherwise will, sooner or later, be destroyed by the Arabs, and be used to build their ovens, or be burnt in their lime-kilns? There, it would at least be preserved, and be accessible to the admiration or the study of those who are eager after knowledge, so long as European art and science teach us to value such monuments. To reconstruct it, a space must be left perfectly free of 6 m. 30, (19 feet 8 inches) in breadth, 4 m. 60, (15 feet) in height, and 3 m. 80, (12 feet 5½ inches) in depth, and this might surely be reserved for it in the New Museum.[13]
I observe, that such chambers form only a small portion of the entire structure of the tomb, and were not intended for the reception of the mummy. The tomb of Prince Merhet is above 70 feet long, 45 broad, and 15 high. It is solidly constructed of great square stones, with slanting outer surfaces. The chamber is alone left vacant, and one, or, as in this instance, two square shafts, leads from the flat roof through the building down to the living rock; at the bottom of which, about 60 feet deep, rock-chambers open at the side, in which the sarcophagi were deposited. I have carefully preserved the venerable remains of the skull of the ancient prince of the house of Cheops, which I found in his mummy chamber. We found, alas! little more, as this tomb also, like most of the others, had been long ago broken open. The entrance originally was closed by a slab of stone. The chamber above ground alone remained accessible at all times, and was therefore ornamented with representations and inscriptions. Here the sacrifices offered to the dead were brought to the occupant of the tomb. It was generally dedicated to the worship of the deceased, and so far corresponded to the temple that was erected before every pyramid belonging to a king, for his worship. Like those temples, these chambers have also their entrance always from the east. The shafts, like the Pyramids, lie behind, to the west, because the deceased was believed to be in the west, whither he had gone with the setting sun, to the Osiris of Amente.
The seventh sheet finally, contains two pillars, and their architrave, from the tomb of a royal relative, who was at the same time the prophet of four kings, and whose name was Ptah-nefru-be-u. The tomb was constructed later than that of Prince Merhet, in the fifth Manethonic Dynasty. It belongs to an entire group of tombs, whose architectonic plan and connection with one another is very remarkable, and which I have, therefore, completely divested of sand, and brought to the light of day, while previously neither the entrance, nor anything but the extreme summit of the outermost encircling walls, were visible.
I also send you the whole plan of this tomb, besides one of those contiguous to it, but I think I shall only bring away with me the architrave, and the beautifully painted pillars of the most southern chamber, which can be easily removed. On the architrave appears the name and titles of the deceased, who is also represented at full length on the four lateral faces of the pillars. AMI, the father of the deceased, appears on the front sides of the northern pillars; ASESKEF-ANCH, his grandfather, on that of the southern. The pillars are twelve feet high, slender, and as usual, without capitals, but with the abacus.
I have entirely isolated the whole chamber at the tomb of Prince Merhet; but for the present I have relinquished the idea of taking it to pieces, as this is not the most favourable season for its removal. I have therefore caused this tomb, as well as the other, to be refilled with sand; and when I arrive at Cairo to-morrow, I shall obtain an order, to prevent any of the tombs that have been opened by us, from being robbed of their stones. It is really revolting to see how long lines of camels from the neighbouring villages come here daily, and march off again, loaded with building stones. Fortunately—for is not everything for the best—the accommodating Fellahs are more attracted by the Psammetic tombs, than by those belonging to the most ancient Dynasties, in which the great blocks are not sufficiently manageable. I begin, however, to have more serious fears for the tombs of the 5th and 7th Dynasties, which have been built with stones of a more moderate size. Yesterday a beautiful standing pillar, covered with inscriptions, which was just going to be sketched, was overturned by the robbers behind our backs. They do not seem to have succeeded in breaking it to pieces. The people here are so degenerate that their strength is quite insufficient, with all their assiduity, to destroy what their great predecessors have erected.
A few days ago, we found a small obelisk erect, in its original position, in a tomb from the commencement of the 7th Dynasty. It is only a few feet high, but in good preservation, and with the name of the occupant of the tomb inscribed upon it. This form of monument, which is first conspicuous in the New Monarchy, is thus removed several Dynasties farther back in the Old Monarchy, even than the Obelisk of Heliopolis.
Letter VII
Saqâra, the 18th March, 1843.
A short time ago, I made an excursion with Abeken and Bonomi to the more distant Pyramids of Lischt and Meidûm. The last especially interested me extremely, as it has solved in a general manner some enigmas in the structure of the Pyramids, which had long occupied my mind.[14] As an exception to the general rule, it lies almost in the lower plain, in the immediate neighbourhood of Bahr Jussuf, and is only just removed out of reach of the inundation; but it rises up so high and stately from the flat surface of the surrounding country, that it attracts notice even from a great distance. Its square, sharp-angled tower-like centre, which diminishes slightly at the summit, namely, at an angle of 74°, rises from an envelopment of rubbish, which surrounds it almost half-way up, to the height of 120 feet. Another hundred feet higher, there succeeds a platform, from which rises a more slender tower of moderate height, in the same angle, which again, in the centre of its flat upper surface, bears the remains of a third elevation. The walls of the principal tower are for the most part smoothly polished, but have stripes at intervals that have been left rough, the cause of which are first appeared almost inexplicable; but on more minute examination, I also found in the interior of the half-destroyed building which surrounds the base, some rising walls that were smooth, and having the same angle as the tower; in front of these, again lay other walls, which followed one upon another like scales. At length it occurred to me that the whole building had proceeded from a small Pyramid, which had been erected in stages of about forty feet high, and then first increased and heightened simultaneously on all sides, by superimposed coverings of stone, from fifteen to twenty feet in breadth, till at length the great steps were filled up so as to form one common flat side, giving the usual pyramidal form to the whole.
This gradual growth explains the enormous magnitude of particular Pyramids, beside so many other smaller ones. Each king began the building of his Pyramid as soon as he ascended the throne; he only designed a small one, to ensure himself a complete tomb, even were he destined to be but a few years upon the throne. But with the advancing years of his reign, he increased it by successive layers, till he thought that he was near the termination of his life. If he died during the erection, then the external covering was alone completed, and the monument of death finally remained proportionate to the duration of the life of the king. If, in the course of centuries, all the other conditions which determine our calculations had equally remained, then, as by the rings of a tree, we might even now have been able to calculate the years in the reigns of particular kings, by the coatings of the Pyramids.
On the other hand, the great enigma of the bearded giant Sphinx still remains unsolved! When, and by whom, was the colossal statue erected, and what was its signification? We must leave the reply to more fortunate successors. It is almost half-covered up with sand, and the granite stele, above eleven feet high, which stands between the paws, and which in itself forms the back wall of a small temple, which is here inserted, was totally invisible. Even the immense excavations made by Caviglia, in the year 1818, had long disappeared, so as not to leave a trace behind. By means of between sixty to eighty persons labouring for whole days together, we almost reached the base of the stele, a drawing of which I caused immediately to be made, as well as an impression on paper, and also a plaster cast, in order to set it up one day in Berlin. This stele, on which the Sphinx is itself represented, was erected by TUTHMOSIS IV., and dates from the first year of his reign. Thus, he must have found the Colossus already there. We are accustomed to regard the Sphinx, in Egypt, as a portrait of the king, and generally indeed, for that of a particular king, whose features it is said to represent; therefore, with the single exception, as far as I am aware, of one female sphinx, which represents the wife of King Horus, they are always andro-sphinxes. In the hieroglyphic written character, the Sphinx is called NEB (the Lord), and forms e. g. the middle syllable in the name of the King NECTANEBUS.
But what king does our Colossus represent? He stands in front of the second Pyramid, that of Schafra (Chephren), not exactly in the axis, yet parallel with the sides of the temple, which stands before it, and in such a manner, as if the rock beside the Sphinx on the northern side was intended as its counterpart. Sphinxes, rams, statues, and obelisks, used besides always to stand in former times in pairs before the entrances of the temples. But what a powerful impression would have been made on the approaching worshipper by two such giant watchmen, between which the ancient pathway led up to the Temple of Chephren. They would have been worthy of that period of vast colossal monuments, and in due proportion with the Pyramid which rises up behind. I cannot deny that this connexion would be most satisfactory to me. What other motive would have induced the Theban kings of the 18th Dynasty, who are alone to be thought of in the New Monarchy, to adorn the Memphitic Field of Death with such a wonder of the world, if entirely unconnected with what surrounds it. In addition to this, upon the steles of Tuthmosis, the name of King CHEPHREN is inscribed in a line, which farther on is almost entirely broken away; a portion of his Name-Shield, unfortunately quite isolated, has been still preserved, therefore undoubtedly it had some sort of reference to the builder of the Pyramid which is situated behind it.
On the other hand, indeed, the question arises: If King Chephren was represented here, why does not the image bear his name? It is rather designated as HAREM-CHU (Horus in the Horizon), that is, as the image of the Sun-god, the emblem of all kings, and also HARMACHIS in one of the Greek inscriptions which have been found in front of the Sphinx. It does not appear to me altogether improbable that Pliny’s fable is founded on this, who makes a King Amasis (Armasis) be buried in the Sphinx;[15] for we surely cannot suppose it was a real sepulchre. Another consideration to be borne in mind is that I have not in general met with the image of the Sphinx in that oldest period of the builders of the Pyramids; yet too much stress need not be laid on this; the form of the Sphinx is not often found, even in inscriptions or representations, in the New Monarchy. In short, the true Œdipus is still wanting for this king of all sphinxes. He who can clear away the inexhaustible sand-flood which is again burying that very field of tombs, and who can expose to view the base of the Sphinx, the ancient pathway to the temple, and the surrounding hills, might soon venture to decide this question.
The enigmas of history are in this land associated with many enigmas and wonders in nature, which I must not leave wholly unnoticed. I must at least describe to you the most recent.
I had descended into a mummy-pit with Abeken, that we might open some sarcophagi we had discovered, and I was not a little astonished, on stepping out, to find myself in an actual snow-storm of locusts, which almost darkening the sky, moved above our heads in hundreds of thousands from the desert in the south-west towards the valley. I fancied it was a single flight, and in haste called the others out of the tombs, that they might witness the Egyptian wonder before it had passed away. But the flight continued, indeed the workmen said, it had even begun an hour previously. We now observed for the first time, that the whole country, far and wide, was covered with locusts. I sent a servant into the desert to find out the breadth of the flight. He ran for about a quarter of an hour, then returned, and said that still as far as he had been able to see, he could discover no termination. I rode home, still in the midst of the storm of locusts. They fell down in heaps on the border of the fruitful plain; and so it lasted the whole day through, till evening, and so on the next, from morning till night, to the third, indeed to the sixth day, and even longer, but in less numerous flights. The day before yesterday, a storm of rain seems for the first time to have beaten down the rear-guard, and destroyed them in the desert. The Arabs make great smoking fires in their fields, they rattle and scream all day long to protect their crops from the unexpected invasion. But it will avail them little. These millions of graminivorous winged insects cover even the adjacent sandy plain like a new living vegetation, to such a degree, that scarcely anything is to be seen of the ground; and when they swarm up from any point, they fall down again on whatever is in the immediate neighbourhood; exhausted by their long journey, in their eagerness they fill their hollow stomachs, and, as if conscious of their enormous numbers, they appear to have lost even all fear of their natural enemies, man, animals, smoke, and noise. But what is most wonderful to me, is their origin from the naked desert, and the instinct which has led them from some oasis across the inhospitable sandy sea, to the rich pastures of the Nile valley. The last time that this land-plague of Egypt exhibited itself to a similar extent was above fourteen years ago. The people say that it is sent by the comet which we have observed in the south-west for the last twelve days, and which now, in the hours of evening, since it is no longer outshone by the moon, again stretches its magnificent tail of fire across the heavens. The zodiacal light, which is so rarely seen in the north, has also been visible of late almost every evening.
I have only now been enabled completely to conclude my account with Gizeh, and to combine the historical results. I have every reason to rejoice over it; the 4th and 5th Dynasties are completed, with the exception of one king. I have just received the somewhat illegible drawing of a stone which has been built into a wall in the village of Abusir, representing a series of kings of the 4th and 5th Dynasties upon their thrones, and, as it appears, in chronological order. I intend to ride there myself to see the original.
Letter VIII
Saqâra, the 13th April, 1843.
I hasten to communicate to you an event which I should not like you to hear for the first time from other quarters, perhaps with alterations and exaggerations. Our camp, a few days ago, was attacked and plundered during the night by an armed band; yet none of our party were seriously injured, and nothing that is irreparable was lost. The affair therefore, is over, and the consequences may only prove a useful lesson to us. But I must first go back several days in my journal.
On the 3rd of April, his R.H. Prince Albert (of Prussia) returned to Cairo from Upper Egypt. The following day I visited the city, and laid before the prince a portion of our labours, in which he especially took a lively interest as he had already seen more of this land of wonders than we ourselves, and the field of Pyramids alone he had still left unvisited. On his first arrival in Cairo, I was absent on an excursion of several days to the Faiûm, with Abeken and Bonomi. The prince returned at the very time of the celebration of some of the chief festivals of the Mahometans, which, had he not been there, I should probably have neglected to attend. On the 6th, the entrance of the returning caravan of pilgrims from Mecca was welcomed by a solemn festival, and, some days later, the birthday of the Prophet, “MULID E’ NEBBI,” was celebrated, one of the most original feasts of the entire East. The principal actors in it are dervishes, who spend the day in processions, and perform their horribly extatic dances, called sikrs, in the evening, in tents illuminated by coloured lamps, which are erected in the avenues of the Ezbekîeh. Between thirty and forty of this religious sect place themselves in a circle, and, keeping time, begin first slowly, then gradually more vehemently, to throw the upper part of their bodies, which are naked, backwards and forwards into the most violent distortions, like people who are possessed. At the same time, they ejaculate in a rhythm, with a loud screaming voice, their Prophet’s saying, LA ILAHA ILL’ ALLAH (“There is no God but Allah”), which, gradually stammered out lower and more feebly, is finally almost rattled in the throat, till at length, their strength being entirely exhausted, some fall down, others withdraw reeling, and the broken circle is, after a short pause, replaced by another.
What a fearful, barbarous worship, which the astonished multitude, great and small, people of condition and those of inferior rank, contemplate with seriousness or in stupid veneration, and in which they themselves not unfrequently take an active part. The god who is appealed to is evidently much less the object of adoration than the appealing, raptured saints themselves; for the crazy and the simple, or men and women who are physically disordered in other ways, are very generally held sacred by the Mahometans, and are treated with great reverence. It is the demoniacal force in nature, acting without being comprehended, and therefore regarded with fear, which is worshipped by the natural man wherever he perceives it, because he feels that it is connected with, yet not under the control of his mental faculties; first, in the mighty elements, then in the wonderful instincts of animals—to us dark, yet subject to a law; finally, in the still more exciting, extatic, or generally abnormal psychological conditions of his own race. We must indeed, regard the Egyptian worship of animals—in as far as it was not merely a symbolic embodiment of deeper and more refined ideas—as resting on the same basis of a universal worship of nature; and the adoration paid to men with disordered intellects, which appears occasionally in other nations also, may be considered as a remarkable offset from that tendency. Whether such conditions really exist at the present time, or whether, as among the dervishes, it is produced artificially, and is intentionally cherished, will not be detected by the multitude; and besides, for the individual case, it is indifferent. An uncomfortable feeling of fear creeps over us in such a neighbourhood, and we feel it necessary to avoid uttering any expressions, or even to give a sign of disgust, or to betray that we see through it, lest we should direct the brutal outbursts on ourselves.
The festival, which lasts nine days, closes with a peculiar ceremony called DOSEH, the Trampling, but which I could not bear to look at. The sheikh of the Saadîeh dervishes rides to the chief sheikh of all the dervishes in Egypt, El Bekri. On the way thither, a great number of these holy people, and others who do not consider themselves inferior to them in piety, throw themselves flat on the ground, face downwards, and in such a manner that the feet of one always lies close to the head of another. The sheikh then rides over this living carpet of human bodies, and his horse is obliged to be led on each side by a servant, to compel it to make this march, unnatural even to the animal. Each body receives two treads from the horse; the greater number spring up again unhurt, but whoever comes away seriously, or, as sometimes occurs, mortally injured, has, besides, this disgrace, that it is believed that on the previous day he had either misunderstood or neglected to say the proper prayers and charm-formularies, which were alone able to protect him.
On the 7th April, Erbkam and I accompanied the prince to the Pyramids, first of all to those of Gizeh. The Pyramid of Cheops was ascended, and the interior was visited. In order to exhibit the beautiful tomb of Prince Merhet, I caused it to be re-opened. We next proceeded to our camp at Saqâra.
Here we heard that during the previous night a daring robbery had been committed in Abeken’s tent. He was sleeping in it, on his return from Cairo, beside a burning light, when his full portmanteau, pistols, and other objects lying near, were purloined. It was only while the thief was making his retreat that a noise was heard by the slumbering guards, composing the night-watch, immediately behind the tent; the darkness, however, hindered all pursuit.
After the prince had also seen the most beautiful tomb of Saqâra, we rode across the plain to Mitrahinneh, to visit the mounds of ruins at Memphis, and the half-buried colossal granite statue of Ramses Miamun (Sesostris)[16], the face of which is still preserved almost without a blemish. It was late in the evening before we again reached Cairo, after a day’s journey of sixteen hours, hardly interrupted even by short pauses for repose; but the unusual exertion seemed rather to heighten than to depress the prince’s cheerful enjoyment in travelling.
The following day we visited the mosques of the city, which are remarkable, partly by their splendour, and in part, also, are peculiarly interesting for the history of architecture in the middle ages, as the earliest general application of the pointed arch is here visible. The questions which relate to this most characteristic department of architecture, the so-called gothic style, interested me so deeply a few years ago, that even here I could not forbear following my old pursuit. The pointed arch is found in the oldest mosques, even as far back as the ninth century. Upon the conquest of Sicily by the Arabs, the new form of arch was transported to that island, where, in the eleventh century, it was found by the Normans, the next conquerors, and was still more generally adopted. Without entering into further details, it seems to me scarcely possible to indicate any historical connexion of the Norman pointed arch of Palermo with our style of pointed arch of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The acceptance of such a connexion would be still more difficult for the explanation of the rows of pointed arches to be found already much earlier in Germany, which are sporadic, but still according to rule; those, for example, in the cathedral of Naumburg as early as the eleventh century, and in Memleben even in the tenth. Theorists do not indeed admit this yet, but I am still waiting for a refutation of the argument I have brought forward.[17]
The Nilometer on the island of Roda, which we visited after the mosques, also contains a series of pointed arches, belonging to the original building, which dates as far back as the ninth century, proved by the Cufic inscriptions, which have been carefully examined by those who are learned in these matters.
Egypt, however, does not only lay claim to the oldest application, therefore, perhaps to the invention, of the pointed arch, but also to that of the round arch. Near the Pyramids there are a number of tombs having stone vaulted roofs, whose single blocks exhibit the correct concentric cut. These belong to the 26th Manethonic Dynasty of the Psammetici, that is, to the seventh and sixth centuries before Christ, and are therefore coeval with the Cloaca Maxima and the Carcer Mamertinus in Rome. But we have also found tombs with vaulted roofs made of Nile mud bricks, which go back as far as the time of the Pyramids. Now, contrary to the opinion of others, I deny that the brick arch, whose single bricks with their parallel surfaces, are only made concentric by the wedge of cement, presupposes a more intimate acquaintance with the actual principle of the arch, and more especially with its qualities of support; and, as a proof of this, we never meet with a concentric joined arch before the time of the Psammetici, but frequently an apparently real arch, in like manner cut out of horizontal layers of stone. But wherever the brick arch was very ancient, we may there most naturally place the development of the concentric stone arch, which is met with at a later period at that very place, contemporaneous at least with its appearance in other countries.
On the following morning I was intending to accompany the prince into the interesting institute of M. Lieder, when Erbkam arrived unexpectedly from our camp. He reported that during the previous night, between two and three in the morning, a number of shots had been suddenly fired in the immediate neighbourhood of our tents, and that at the same time a body of more than twenty people had broken into the camp. Our encampment is on a narrow flat space in front of the rock-tombs, which are excavated about half-way up the precipitous sides of the Libyan valley, and the great accumulation of rubbish has formed a broad terrace before them. It was only accessible on one side, by a cleft, which passes our terrace from above, downwards. It was from this point that the attack was made. They first fell upon the tent in which we all take our meals, and which also serves the purpose of a drawing-room, which soon fell down. Then followed the other great tent, in which Erbkam, Frey, Ernest Weidenbach, and Franke, were sleeping. This was also torn down, and covered its inmates, who, in the general confusion, extricated themselves with difficulty from the ropes and canvas. Besides all this, the arms had been taken the day before into one tent, for the reception of the prince, and had been arranged and secured to the central pole, so that no one had them at hand. The watchmen—cowardly fellows—who knew that by the orders of the police here, they would incur punishment, were anything of the sort to befal us, even should they not be to blame, had immediately run off on all sides, uttering loud cries, and have not yet returned. The robbers now laid hold of the chests and boxes which stood nearest to them, rolled whatever they could seize down the hill, and soon disappeared across the plain. Their muskets were evidently not loaded with ball, for no one had been wounded by them; they had, however, attained their object, which was to increase the confusion. E. Weidenbach, and some of our servants, had alone been wounded in the head and shoulders, though not dangerously, by the butt-ends of their muskets, or by bludgeons. The purloined articles must, however, have bitterly disappointed the expectation of the robbers, for the great trunks scarcely contained anything but European clothes, and other things, which no Arab can use. A number of coloured sketches are most to be regretted—the Sunday studies, up to the present time, of the very able artist Frey.
We know besides, very well, from whence this attack has proceeded. We dwell on the frontier of the territory of Abusir, an Arab village which has been long under evil report, situated between Kafr el Batran, at the foot of the Pyramids of Gizeh, and Saqâra. By ARABS (Arab. pl. ʾUrbân) I mean, according to the custom of this country, those inhabitants who, as we are informed, only settled at a later period in the Nile valley, and having obtained certain privileges, founded some villages here. They are distinguished by their free origin, and their more manly character, from the FELLAHS (Fellahʿ, pl. Fellahʿîn), the original peasants of the land, who, enervated by their centuries of bondage, have reached a low point of degradation, and who were not, besides, able to withstand the encroachment of Islam. The name of BEDOUIN (Bedaui, pl. Bedauîn) belongs alone to the ever free son of the Desert, who only roves about the borders of the inhabited country. In the vicinity of the Pyramids there are now a number of Arab villages. To these, also, belong the three places I have mentioned. Since our place of encampment was within the territory of the Sheikh of Abusir, a young, handsome, and enterprising man, he had a certain claim to supply us with the necessary number of well-paid watchmen. I, however, preferred to place ourselves under the protection of the more trustworthy, and more powerful Sheikh of Saqâra, whom I had known before, and within whose district the principal field of our labours is situated. This determination deprived the people of Abusir of a reward, and us of their friendship, as I had already observed for some time past, without vexing myself any further about it. They had manifestly taken the opportunity at the present time, when I was absent in Cairo with several servants, to execute this prank. The footmarks were traced through the plain to Abusir, and a little clever boy probably served as a spy, the grandson of an old Turk from the Mameluke times, the only friend in Abusir, with whom we sometimes exchanged visits. It must have been also by means of this boy, who often came to our camp, that the first theft was committed in Abeken’s tent, with which he was well acquainted.
The attack was a serious affair, and its consequences might be important, if it remained unpunished. I went immediately with M. von Wagner to Scherif Pascha, the minister, whose business it was to find out the offenders.
A few days afterwards the plain beneath our camp became an animated scene. The mudhir (governor) of the province arrived with a splendid cavalcade, and a great troop of under officials, and servants, and pitched his gay camp at the foot of the hill. We exchanged visits of ceremony, and discussed what had happened. The mudhir told us beforehand that the individual offenders would not be found out, at any rate they would not be brought to confess, because each knew that his throat stood a poor chance. However, on the second day, the Sheikhs of Saqâra and of Abusir, and a number of suspected persons were brought forward, in order to be put upon their trial. As was to be expected, no decision was come to, neither by personal interviews, nor examinations. The punishment was therefore summarily executed. One after the other they were tied to a post, their faces towards the ground, and the soles of their feet upwards. They were then unmercifully bastinadoed with a long whip of hippopotamus hide, called kurbatsch, often till they fainted. It was in vain that I urged that I saw no reason to punish these particular persons, and I was still more astonished when our old venerable friend, the Sheikh of Saqâra, for whose innocence I would have accepted any surety, was also led up, and, like the others, was laid in the dust. I expressed my surprise to the mudhir, and protested earnestly against it, but received for answer that he could not be exempted from the punishment, as though, indeed, we had not been on his ground and territory, we had however received the watchmen from him, who had run off, and had not then returned. With some difficulty I obtained, at least, a mitigation of the punishment; but he had already become almost insensible, and it was necessary to have him carried to the tent, where his feet were bound up. The whole affair ended with a compensation in money for the value of the stolen articles, which I purposely did not estimate at too low a price, as every loss of money remains for years in the remembrance of the Arab, while he forgets the bastinado, indeed boasts of it, as soon as he no longer feels it. Nezel min e’ semma e’ nebút, bárakak min Allah, say the Arabs, i. e. “The rod came from Heaven, a blessing from God.” But also in the matter of the fine, the sum that we demanded was so distributed, that the rich Sheikh of Saqâra was compelled to pay a far greater share than the Sheikh of Abusir, a partiality which was probably in some measure owing to the intercession of the old distinguished Turk of Abusir with the Turkish mudhir.
As soon as the money was paid down I went to our Sheikh of Saqâra, whose unmerited adverse fate had seriously vexed me, and I publicly gave him the half of his money back again, promising in confidence that afterwards, when the mudhir should have departed, I would restore to him also the other half. This was such an unexpected thing to the old sheikh, that he looked at me for a long time incredulously, then kissed my hands and feet, and called me his best friend on earth; I, who had just been, at all events, the indirect occasion of his beautiful beard being soiled with dust, and of his feet being so lacerated as to cause him weeks of pain. His wondering joy, however, was not directed so much at me as at the unhoped-for sight of the money, which never loses its charm with the Arab.
There is a curious mixture of noble pride and vulgar avarice to be found in the Arab, which is at first quite incomprehensible to the European. Their free noble bearing, and imperturbable repose, appear to express nothing but a proud sense of honour; balanced, however, against the smallest gain of money, it melts away like wax before the sun, and the most contemptuous treatment is not taken into consideration, but is borne with crouching servility where money is in question. We might at first imagine one of these two natures to be hypocrisy, or dissimulation; but the contradiction returns too often in all forms, both great and small, not to lead to the conviction that it is characteristic of the Arab, if not of the entire East. Even as early as in the days of the Romans, the Egyptians had so far degenerated, that Ammianus Marcellinus could say of them: Erubescit apud eos, si quis non infitiando tributa plurimas in corpore vibices ostendat,[18] and in the same manner the fellah to-day points with a contented smile to his scars as soon as the tax-gatherer has withdrawn, who, in spite of his instruments of torture, has been curtailed of a few piastres.
Letter IX
Cairo, the 22nd April, 1843.
A violent cold, which for some time checked my usual activity, has led me hither from our camp at Saqâra. The worst is, that we are still obliged to postpone our further journey. Certainly all which such a spot affords is of the utmost interest, but the abundance of material this time almost causes us embarrassment. The most important, but most difficult works, and those which occupy the longest time, are those of our architect Erbkam. To him belongs the great task of making the most detailed plans of the border of the desert, in nearly the central point of which we lie encamped. This ground comprises the almost uninterrupted field of tombs from the Pyramid of Rigah as far as that of Daschûr. The separate plans of the northern fields of Abu Roasch, Gizeh, Zauiet el Arrian are already completed. However meritorious the sketches of Perring, they cannot be compared in exactitude with ours. Entire Necropoli, with the Pyramids belonging to them, have been newly discovered, partly by myself, partly by Erbkam. Some of the Pyramids, hitherto unknown, are even now from eighty to a hundred feet high; others are indeed almost wholly demolished, but were originally of considerable extent, as is manifested by their base. My return to Saqâra will, it is to be hoped, give the signal for our departure.
We shall go by land to the Faiûm, the province which branches off into the desert. The season is still incomparably beautiful, and the desert-journey will undoubtedly be far more conducive to our health than the voyage on the Nile, which we before contemplated.
It is to be hoped that my state of health will not detain me long here, for my impatience daily increases to return from the living city of the Mamelukes into the solemn Death-city of the old Pharaohs. And yet it would perhaps afford you more pleasure if I were able to paint in colours, or in words, what I here see before my windows.
I live in the extensive square of the Ezbekîeh, in the most beautiful and most frequented part of the city. Formerly, there was a great lake in the centre, which is now, however, converted into gardens. Broad streets run round it, separated for riders, and foot passengers, and shaded by lofty trees. There all the East pass by, with their gaily-coloured, various, yet always picturesque costumes; the poorer classes with blue and white tucked up blouses, and the richer with long garments of different materials, with silk kaftans,[19] or fine cloth dresses of delicately contrasted colours, with white, red, green, and black turbans, or with the more refined, but less becoming, Turkish tarbusch;[20] amidst these some Greeks, with their dandy tunics, or Arab Sheikhs, wrapped up in their wide antique mantles, thrown around them; the children wholly or half naked, also with shaven heads, on which now and then a single tuft stands up from the crown, as if ready to be laid hold of; the women with veiled faces, but whose eyes painted round with black, peer forth ghost-like hither and thither through peep-holes in the veil. All these, and a hundred other indescribable figures, walk, glide, and rush past, on foot, on asses, mules, dromedaries, camels, horses, only not in carriages; for these were more used even in the time of the Pharaohs than they are at present. If I look up from the street, my view is bounded on one side by splendid mosques, with cupolas, and slender-springing minarets, together with long rows of houses, most of them built carelessly, yet some of a more distinguished class, richly ornamented with artistically carved grated windows, and elegant balconies; on the other side, by the green domes of palm-trees, or by leafy sycamores and acacias. Finally, in the distant background, beyond the flat roofs, and green intervening masses, the far-shining sister-pair of the two largest Pyramids stand out distinctly on the Libyan horizon in sharp lines through the thin vapour. What a contrast from that mongrel Alexandria, where innate Eastern habits and feelings still struggle for mastery with the overpowering high-pressure civilisation of Europe. It seems to me as if we had already here penetrated into the innermost heart of the East of the present day.
Letter X
On the Ruins of the Labyrinth, the 31st May, 1843.
After my return to the camp of Saqâra, I only required three more days to finish our work there. I paid a last visit to the ruins of ancient Memphis, the plan of which Erbkam had meanwhile completed; some interesting discoveries terminated our researches.
On the 19th of May we at length set out on our journey, with twenty camels, two dromedaries, thirteen asses, and one horse. When I speak of camels and dromedaries, it is perhaps not superfluous to observe what is here understood by these names, for in Europe an incorrect or rather arbitrary distinction is made between them, which is unknown here. We Germans call camel what the French call dromadaire, and dromedary (Trampelthier, Germ. a corruption of dromedary), what they call chameau. The first is said to have one hump, the other two. According to that, there can be no question of dromedaries or chameaux in Egypt, for here there are no two-humped creatures, although now and then they appear in one-humped families. In Syria again, and the central parts of Asia, there would be no camels or dromadaires; at least the one-humped animals are very rare. In truth, however, it is a very immaterial difference, and whether the one hump of fat on the back be divided in two or not, in itself alone would perhaps scarcely justify the distinction of a different species. The people of the East, at the present day at least, make no distinction between them; neither did the ancients also, for the one-humped creatures do not carry easier, nor move quicker, than the others. Nor does the rider sit more conveniently between two humps, for the saddle is equally raised over the two as over the one hump. On the other hand a great distinction, although not founded on natural history grounds, has been generally established between the strong, dull camel, used as a beast of burden, commonly called gémel, and the younger, more tractable, broken-in, riding camel, which is called heggîn, because the pilgrims to Mecca (hágg, pl. heggâg) set a great value on good riding animals. An Arab takes it as much amiss if his slim favourite camel is called a gémel, as if with us, a well-broken horse was to be described as a plough or draught-horse. Dromedarius, or camelus dromas, κάμηλος δρομάς, does not appear to have meant more among the ancients, as the name proves, than a courser of a slight breed, suited for riding.
As these last are far more expensive, it is often difficult to procure, even a few of the better animals from the Arabs who furnish them; most of us are obliged to be contented with ordinary beasts of burden. Mine was this time endurable, and received, at least, the title of heggîn, from the Arabs.
I did not wait for the decampment of the general party, in which the Sheikhs of Saqâra and Mitrahinneh were included, but rode on in front with Erbkam, always beside the desert. On our way, the latter made one more plan of a Pyramid, with the surrounding ground, which I had observed on a former trip. We have now a list of, altogether, sixty-seven Pyramids, almost twice as many as are to be found in Perring. The topographical plans of Erbkam are most invaluable.
Soon after sunset we arrived at the first Pyramid of Lischt, where we found our tents already pitched. The following morning I made the caravan depart early, and I remained behind with Erbkam, that we might employ ourselves in examining and noting down the two Pyramids, which stand rather widely apart in this isolated field of death. We did not follow till two o’clock, and arrived about seven in the evening at our tents, which were pitched on the south side of the stately Pyramid of Meidûm. It was again a short day’s journey to the Pyramid of Illahûn, and thence through the embouchure of the Faiûm to this spot, three hours more.[21] It was late before we started. I left Erbkam and E. Weidenbach behind, to put on paper the examination of the ground; and I rode off with only two servants, half an hour in advance of the caravan, in order to reach the Labyrinth by a more interesting route, along the Bahr Jussuf, and to fix upon the place of encampment.
Here we have been, on the southern side of the Pyramid of Mœris, since the 23rd May, and are settled among the ruins of the Labyrinth; for I was certain from the first, after we had made but a hasty survey of the whole, that we are perfectly entitled to designate them under this name: I did not, however, imagine that it would have been so easy for us to become convinced of this.
As soon as Erbkam had measured and noted down a small plan of what is extant, I caused some excavators to be levied from the surrounding villages, through the Mudhir of Medînet el Faiûm, the governor of the province, and ordered them to make trenches through the ruins, and to dig at four or five places at once. A hundred and eight people were thus occupied to-day. With the exception of those belonging to the nearest place, Howara, who return home every evening, I allow these people to encamp on the northern side of the Pyramid, and to spend their nights there. They have their overseers, and bread is brought to them; every morning they are counted, and they are paid every evening; each man receives a piastre—about two silver groschens;[22] each child, half a piastre, sometimes, when they have been particularly diligent, as much as thirty paras (there are forty of them in a piastre). Each of the men brings with him a pickaxe, and a shallow, woven basket (maktaf). The children, who form the greatest numbers, are only required to bring baskets. The maktafs are filled by the men, and carried away by the children on their heads. This is done in long processions, which are kept in order and at work by special overseers.
Their chief pleasure, and a material assistance in their daily work, is singing. They have some simple melodies, which at a distance, owing to their great monotony, make almost a melancholy impression. When near them, however, the unmerciful persistence of the shrill voices, as they often amuse themselves many hours together in the same manner, is hardly to be borne. It is only the consideration that I am helping so many to bear half their burden for the day, and that I materially further the work, which has constantly prevented me interfering when it reaches this point, till I sometimes at length leave my tent in despair, in order, by employing myself at a greater distance, to obtain some repose for my ears. The only variety in the execution of the stanza of two lines, is that the first line is sung by one voice, the second by the whole chorus, while the hands are clapped at every bar of common time. For example:
[Music:
1. Om mi be-tá-kul má-ku-li U a-ná bagh-bágh-tét aʾ-léï (Dill) 2. Dill as-sa—ri mál u mal Bun yál dill ebánne ú aʾ-léï (Yâ) Yâ-min sa-báhʾ u le-bén U sámneh sâih ʾá-le-ʾï &c.
i. e. 1. My mother eats my dates, And I—anger overcomes me. 2. The shade of Asser (vesper-time) lowers itself and lowers itself. The wall (bunyân). 3. (Oh) Happiness (when) the morning milk And butter pour over me.]
Makûl, in the first line, is really only “food,” but it has become a general expression for dates, because, in the huts of the Fellah, this is the chief, and, for many people, the only food. Another rather more animated melody is this one:
[Music]
in which the chorus, in exception to the general rule, separates into two parts. I hardly think, however, that these thirds are intentional, they slip in of themselves; for it sometimes happens that single voices join in singing the same cadence in a totally different strain without paying any regard to whole hours of discord. The Arab—I might almost say, the people of the East generally—are devoid of the sense of making the simplest complications of several voices into a harmony. The most artistic music of the best singers and performers, which often inexpressibly delights the most civilised Musulman in Cairo, and collects large masses of people as an audience, consists only in a melody a hundred times repeated, flourishing, restless, and whirling, whose theme cannot be retained, and can scarcely be detected by a European ear. Nor are the different instruments, when played together, employed for any harmonious united variety, beyond what is suggested by the rhythm.
We have eight watchmen during the night, who really do watch, as I often convince myself by making a nightly round. One of them walks constantly up and down with his gun on the ramparts surrounding our camp, for if any where, we have to fear another attack here, not from the Arabs, but from the still more dangerous Bedouins, who inhabit the borders of the desert in many single hordes, and are not under the control of great sheikhs, who we might secure in our interests. From Illahûn to this place, we passed through a Bedouin camp, whose sheikh must have known of our arrival, as he rode out to meet me on horseback, and offered his services, if we should require anything here. Farther on, we met an old man and a girl in a distracted state, uttering loud cries of despair. They threw dust into the air, and heaped it on their heads. As we approached nearer to them, they complained to us with inconsolable expressions that two Bedouins had just robbed them of their only buffalo. We actually saw the robbers still in the distance, on horseback, driving the buffalo before them into the desert. I was alone with my dragoman and my little donkey-boy, Auad, a lively, dark-skinned Berber, and I could be of no assistance to these poor people. Such thefts are not unfrequent here. A short time ago, one tribe drove a hundred and twenty camels away from another tribe, and none of them have yet come back.
Nevertheless, we shall probably remain here unmolested; for the sentence we passed at Saqâra is well known, and they are aware that we are specially recommended to the authorities. They have also now become convinced that we carry no gold or silver with us in our heavy chests, which was formerly very generally believed among the Arabs. Added to this, we are ourselves well armed against any new attack. I have collected the most valuable chests in my own tent, and every night an English double-barrelled gun and two pistols lie ready beside my bed. Besides, I clear out my tent every evening, that we may be prepared for anything, especially for storms, from which we have had to suffer much latterly, and of a degree of violence unknown in Europe. Abeken’s tent fell three times over his head in one day, and the last time roused him in a very disagreeable manner out of his sleep. Thus we are often whole days and nights in constant expectation that during the next gust of wind our airy house may fall down upon our heads; under this apprehension, it requires some habit to continue to work or to sleep quietly.
It appears that we are to have a taste of all the plagues of Egypt. Our experience began with the inundation at the Great Pyramids; then came the locusts, whose young fry has now increased like sand upon the sea-shore, and is again devouring the green fields and trees, which, combined with the previous cattle disease, is indeed sufficient to cause a famine; then occurred the hostile attack which was preceded by a daring robbery. Nor has even a conflagration been wholly wanting. By an incautious salute, Wild’s tent was set on fire and partly burnt in Saqâra, while we stood around in bright sunshine, which prevented the fire being seen by us. Now comes, in addition to this, the annoyance of mice, which we had not hitherto experienced; they gnaw, play, and squeak away in my tent, as if they had always been at home there, quite unconcerned whether I am within it or not. During the night they run over my bed, and over my face; and yesterday I started up frightened, out of my sleep, because I suddenly felt the sharp little tooth of one of these audacious guests upon my foot. I sprang up in a rage, struck a light, and knocked against all the chests and pegs; but on lying down once more, I was soon driven out of bed again. In spite of all these annoyances, however, we continue to keep up a good and cheerful spirit, and God be thanked, they have hitherto only threatened us, and made us heedful, not materially injured us.
The superintendence over the servants, and the management of much extra business, has now been considerably alleviated, by my having brought a well-qualified Kawass with me from Cairo. These Kawass, who form a peculiar band of sub-officers of the Pascha, are considered here, in the country, a peculiar and important class of persons. Only Turks are appointed, and they possess, through their nationality alone, an innate superiority over every Arab. There are probably few nations who have so much natural ability to rule as the Turks, who, nevertheless, we are often accustomed to regard as rude, uncouth, and half barbarians. On the contrary, as a nation, they have some degree of distinction. Imperturbable repose, calmness, reserve, and energy of will, appear to belong to every Turk, down to the common soldier, and do not fail to make a certain impression upon the European on first acquaintance. This external bearing with the appearance of deliberate firmness, this reserved proud politeness easily passing into nice shades of ceremonial, is met with in a still higher degree among the upper rank of Turks, who have all, from childhood upwards, passed through a school of the strictest etiquette in their own families. They have an innate contempt for everything which does not belong to their own nation, and appear to have no feeling for the natural superiority of higher mental culture and civilisation which the ordinary European usually inspires among other nations.
Nothing is to be gained from the Turk by kindness, considerate attention, demonstration, or even by anger; these he considers as proofs of weakness. The greatest reserve alone, and the most careful distant politeness towards the great, or the bearing of a person of some consequence, and absolute commands to inferiors, answers the purpose here. A Turkish Kawass drives a whole village of Fellahs, or Arabs, before him, and makes a decided impression even on the still prouder Bedouins. The Pascha employs the Kawass-corps as special messengers, and on commissions, throughout the whole country. They are the chief executive servants of the Pascha, and of the governors of the provinces. Every foreign consul has also a similar Kawass, without whom he hardly takes a single step, since he is his guard of honour, the sign, and the right hand of his indisputable authority. When he rides out, the Kawass rides before him with a great silver stick, and drives the people and animals with words or blows out of his path; and woe to him who should make a movement, or even a gesture of disobedience. The Pascha sometimes also gives such a guard of honour, with similar authority, as an escort to strangers who are specially recommended to him, and thus we also received a Kawass at the commencement of our journey, who however, during our long period of repose in Gizeh was only a burden, and at length, on account of his making extravagant demands, was not very graciously dismissed by me. On the occasion of the attack in Saqâra, I caused another to be given me by Scherif Pascha; but he still is not the sort of man that we want, so I have now brought a third with me from Cairo, who hitherto has proved an excellent one. He relieves me from the entire superintendence over the servants, and manages admirably all that I have to transact with the people and authorities of the country. If I were in Europe I should have supposed that I had more than sufficient strength for the whole external guidance of the expedition, as well as for its more immediate object, but in this climate one must measure by a different scale. Patience and repose are here, just as necessary elements of life, as meat and drink.
Letter XI
The Labyrinth, the 25th June, 1843.
These lines are written to you from the distinctly recognised Labyrinth of Mœris and the Dodecarchs, not from the doubtful spot whose identity is still contested, of which I myself was unable to form any conception from the hitherto more than deficient descriptions even of those who have removed the Labyrinth hither. An immense cluster of chambers still remains, and in the centre lies the great square, where the courts once stood, covered with the remains of large monolithic granite columns, and of others of white hard limestone, shining almost like marble.
I approached the spot, fearing that we must only endeavour, as others had done before us, to confirm the information of the ancients on the geographical position of the place; that all form of the edifice itself had disappeared, and that an unshapely heap of ruins might deter us from making any examinations. Instead of this, at the first superficial survey of the ground, a number of complicated spaces, of true labyrinthine forms, immediately presented themselves, both above and below ground, and the eye could easily detect the principal buildings, more than a stadium (Strabo) in extent. Where the French expedition had vainly sought for chambers, we literally at once find hundreds of them, both next to, and above one another, small, often diminutive ones, beside greater ones, and large ones, supported by small columns, with thresholds, and niches in the walls, with remains of columns, and single casing-stones, connected by corridors, without any regularity in the entrances and exits, so that the descriptions of Herodotus and Strabo, in this respect, are fully justified. But at the same time also, the opinion, which was never adopted by me, and is irreconcileable with any architectonic view, that there are serpentine, case-like windings, in place of square rooms, is decidedly refuted.
The whole is so arranged, that three immense masses of buildings, 300 feet broad, enclose a square place, which is 600 feet long and 500 feet wide. The fourth side, one of the narrow ones, is bounded by the Pyramid, which lies behind it; it is 300 feet square, and therefore does not quite reach the side wings of the above-mentioned masses of buildings. A canal of rather modern date, passing obliquely through the ruins, and which one can almost leap over, at least at the present season, cuts off exactly the best preserved portion of the labyrinthian chambers, together with part of the great central square, which at one time was divided into courts. The travellers preferred not wetting their feet, and remained on this side, where the continuation of the wings of the buildings is certainly more concealed beneath the rubbish. But the chambers lying on the farther side, especially their southern point, where the walls rise nearly ten feet above the rubbish, and about twenty feet above the base of the ruins, are to be seen very well even from this, the eastern side; and viewed from the summit of the Pyramid, the regular plan of the whole design lies before one as on a map. Erbkam has been occupied ever since our arrival, in making the special plan, on which every chamber or wall, however small, will be noted down. The farther portion of the ruins is, therefore, by far the most difficult to record. On this side it is an easier task, but so much the more difficult to understand. Here the labyrinth of chambers passes on southwards. The courts were situated between this and the Pyramid lying opposite on the northern side. But almost all of these have disappeared. We have, therefore, nothing to guide us but the dimensions of the square, which lead us to suppose that it was divided into two halves, by a long wall, against which the twelve courts (for we cannot, indeed, with any certainty, make out that there were more) abutted on both sides, so that their entrances turned towards opposite sides, and had immediately facing them the extensive mass of innumerable chambers.
But who was the Maros, Mendes, Imandes, who, by the account of the Greeks, erected the Labyrinth, or rather the Pyramid belonging to it, for his tomb? In the Manethonic list of Kings, we find the builder of the Labyrinth introduced towards the end of the 12th Dynasty, the last of the Old Monarchy, shortly before the invasion of the Hyksos. The fragments of the mighty columns and architraves which we have dug up from the great square of the halls, exhibit the name-shields of the sixth king of this same 12th Dynasty, Amenemha III. Thus the important question of its place in history is answered.[23] We have also made excavations on the north side of the Pyramid, because it is here that we conjecture the entrance must have been. But it has not been hitherto discovered. We have only as yet penetrated into a chamber which lay in front of the Pyramid, and which was covered by a great quantity of rubbish, and we have several times found the name of Amenemha here also. The builder and occupier of the Pyramid is therefore determined. But this does not refute the statement of Herodotus, that the Dodecarchs, only 200 years before his time, had undertaken the building of the Labyrinth. We have found no inscriptions in the ruins of the great masses of chambers which surround the central space. It may be easily proved by future excavations that this whole building, and probably also the disposition of the twelve courts, belong only, in fact, to the 26th Dynasty of Manetho, so that the original temple of Amenemha formed merely part of this gigantic architectural enclosure.
So much for the Labyrinth and its Pyramid. The exact position which its builder occupies in history is by far the most important result that we could altogether hope to obtain here. I must now say a few words respecting the other world’s wonder of this province, Lake Mœris.
The obscurity which has hitherto hung over it seems at length to have been dispersed, by a beautiful discovery, which was made a short time ago by the excellent Linant, the director of the water-works of the Pascha. Hitherto there was only one point of agreement, that the lake was situated in the Faiûm. Now, as at the present day there is only one single lake in this remarkable semi-oasis, the Birqet-el-Qorn, which is situated in its most remote and lowest parts, this must be the Lake Mœris; we have no other choice. Its celebrity, however, rested principally upon this, that it was an artificially designed (Herodotus says an excavated) and extremely profitable lake, which was filled by the Nile when it was high, and when the water was low, flowed off again by the connecting canal; and irrigating on the one side the grounds of the Faiûm, on the other, during its reflux, the adjacent tracts of the Memphitic district, at the same time yielded extremely rich fishing near the double sluices at the mouth of the Faiûm. To the annoyance of Antiquarians and Philologists, not one of all these peculiarities belonged to the Birqet-el-Qorn. This is not an artificial, but a natural lake, which is only in part fed by the water of the Jussuf canal. One of its useful qualities can be hardly said to exist, since no fishing-boat enlivens its surface, encircled by an arid desert, because the brackish water contains scarcely any fish, and is in no degree favourable to the vegetation on its shores. When the Nile is at its height, and there is a more abundant supply of water, it certainly rises; but it is situated at far too low a level to allow a drop of the water with which it has been supplied, ever to flow back again. The whole province must be buried beneath the flood before the waters could find their way back into the valley, for the artificially lowered rocky channel through which the Bahr Jussuf is brought hither, branching off from the Nile about forty miles south, lies higher than the whole oasis. The surface of the Birqet-el-Qorn is now about seventy feet below the point where the canal flows in, and can never have risen to a much greater height,[24] which is proved by some remains of a temple upon its shores. As little does it agree with the statement, that the Labyrinth, and the capital Arsinoë, the present Medînet-el-Faiûm, were situated on its shores.
Linant has now discovered huge dams, miles in length, of the most ancient solid construction, which separates the uppermost portion of the shell-like, convex-formed basin of the Faiûm from those parts which are situated lower and lie farther back, and, according to him, could only have been intended to retain artificially a great lake, which now, however, since the dams have been long broken through, lies completely dry. This lake he holds to be that of Mœris. I must confess that the whole thing, when he first communicated it to me by word of mouth, impressed me with the idea that it was an extremely happy discovery, which will also spare us in future many fruitless researches. An inspection of the ground has now removed all my doubts as to the correctness of this view. I hold it to be an insubvertible fact. Linant’s treatise is now being printed, and I will send it to you as soon as it is to be had.[25]
But finally, if you ask me what the name of Mœris has to do with that of Amenemha, I can only answer, nothing. The name Mœris neither appears on the monuments, nor in Manetho. I rather think that here again we find one of the numerous misunderstandings of the Greeks. The Egyptians called the lake, Phiom en mere, the Lake of the Nile-inundation (Copt. ⲙⲏⲣⲉ, inundatio). The Greeks made out of mere, the water which formed the lake, a King Mœris who designed the lake, and then troubled themselves no further about the true originator, Amenemha. At a later period the whole province received the name ⲫⲓⲟⲙ, Phiom, the Lake, from which the present name Faiûm has been derived.
Letter XII
The Labyrinth, the 18th July, 1843.
We have accomplished our journey round that remarkable province, the Faiûm, very rarely visited by Europeans, which, on account of its fertility, may be named the Garden of Egypt; and precisely because these parts are almost as unknown as the distant oases of Libya, you will, perhaps, be glad to hear some more details about them from me.
I started with Erbkam, E. Weidenbach, and Abeken, on the 3rd of July. We went from the Labyrinth along the Bahr Wardâni, which skirts the eastern border of the desert, and forms the boundary, to which the shore of Lake Mœris at one time extended towards the East. The canal is now dry, and is replaced by the still more recent Bahr Scherkîeh, which, as they say, was made by the Sultan Barquq, and is conducted through the middle of the Labyrinth; it at first crosses the Wardâni several times, but afterwards keeps more inland. In three hours we reached the point where the huge dam of Mœris projects from the middle of the Faiûm into the desert. It runs out in this spot for about one and a half geographical miles as far as El Elâm. In the middle of this tract it is intersected by Bahr-bela-mâ, a deep bed of a stream, which now cuts through the old lake-bottom, and is usually dry, but when there is a great supply of water, it is used as an outlet for the superfluity towards Tamîeh, and into the Birqet-el-Qorn. This enabled us to examine the dam itself from a nearer point of view. The current, which at times is swollen and rapid, has scooped out a passage for itself since the destruction of the lake, not only through the alluvial soil that formed the bottom of the lake, but also through several other layers of earth, and even through the slightly indurated limestone lying undermost; so that the water, at this season, reduced certainly to a minimum, flows about sixty feet lower than the present dry bottom of the lake. I measured accurately the separate layers of earth, and carried away with me a specimen of each. The breadth of the dam cannot be determined with certainty, but may, perhaps, have amounted to 150 feet. The height of the dam has probably become somewhat lower with time. I found it to be 1 m. 90 (6 feet 3 inches English) above the present bottom of the lake, and 5 m. 60 (18 feet 4 inches English) above the opposite plain. If we suppose this last to be on a similar level with the original bottom of the lake (which was, however, probably lower, because the external ground was irrigated, and consequently became elevated), then the dam, apart from its gradual levelling from above downwards, must have been formerly as much as 5 m. 60, consequently 17 feet high, and the ground in the inner part of the lake, during its existence of more than two thousand years, must have risen by deposits of earth about 11 feet. But if we admit that the black earth also, from 11 to 12 feet thick, which is still to be found outside of the dams, was deposited within the historical times, then the above numbers would even require to be doubled. Thus we have some idea how its utility must have been much diminished with time; for the lake (if we assume that its circumference is what Linant asserts), by the filling up of the 11 feet of earth, must have lost 13,000 millions of square feet of the water, which it might have formerly contained. An elevation of the dams could in no possible manner have prevented this, because they had been already placed in exact relation to the point of the influx of the Bahr Jussuf into the Faiûm. This may have been one of the most substantial reasons why Lake Mœris was allowed at a later period to fall into decay; and even Linant’s bold project to restore the lake could not wholly repair this loss, even if he were to make the Bahr Jussuf branch off from the Nile at a much higher point than was thought necessary by the old Pharaohs.
In two hours and a half from this intersection, following the dam to El Elâm, where it ceases, we reached the remarkable remains of the two monuments of Biahmu, which Linant considers to be the Pyramids of Mœris and his consort, which were seen by Herodotus in the lake. They were built out of great massive blocks; the nucleus of each of them is still standing, but not in the centre of the almost square rectangle, which, by their appearance, they seem to have originally occupied. They rose at an angle of 64°, therefore, with a much steeper inclination than Pyramids usually do. Their present height, which, however, seems to have been originally the same as it is now, only amounts to twenty-three feet, to which, nevertheless, must be added, a peculiar and somewhat projecting base of seven feet. A small excavation convinced me that the lowest layer of stone, which only reaches four feet beneath the present ground, was founded neither on sand nor on rock, but upon Nile mud, which more especially render the great antiquity of these buildings very doubtful. At least it is to be inferred from this that they did not stand in the lake, which, if it encircled them, must have had a remarkable curve outwards to the north-west.
We had been riding hitherto on the line of separation between the ancient bottom of the lake and the adjacent district. The former is bare and sterile, since the land, at the present day, lies so high that it cannot be overflowed. On the other hand, the broad tract of land enclosing the ancient lake, forms by far the most beautiful and most fertile part of the Faiûm. We now traversed this district, while we left the capital of the province, Medînet el Faiûm, with the mounds of the ancient CROCODILOPOLIS on our left, and rode by Selajîn and Fidimîn, to Agamîeh, where we spent the night. The next morning, near Bischeh, we reached the limits of this continuous garden-land. Here we entered a new region, forming a striking contrast to the former, by its sterility and desolation, enriching it like a girdle, and separating it from the crescent-shaped Birqet-el-Qorn, situated in the lowest and most distant part. About mid-day we reached the lake. The only boat which was to be had, far and wide, conveyed us in an hour and a half across the expanse of water, encircled all around by the desert, to an island lying in the centre of the lake, called Gezîret-el-Qorn. We, however, found nothing on it worthy of notice, not even a trace of a building, so towards the evening we returned.
The next morning we re-crossed the lake in a more northerly direction, and landed on a small peninsula of the opposite shore, which rises at once 150 feet, to a plateau of the Libyan Desert, commanding the whole Oasis. We then ascended, and about an hour distant from the shore, in the midst of the inhospitable desert, devoid of water and vegetation, we found the extensive ruins of an ancient town, which on earlier maps is named Medînet Nimrud. They were utterly unacquainted with this name here; the place was only known by the designation of DIMÉH. On the following day, the 7th July, the regular plan of these ruins, with the remains of its temple, was noted down by Erbkam, who had spent the night here with Abeken. There are no inscriptions on the temple, and whatever sculptures we found, were placed in this remarkable building at a late period. It was probably intended only as a military station, against invasions from Lybia into the rich country of the Faiûm.
On the 8th July we went in our boat to QASR QERÛN, an old town on the southern end of the lake, with a temple of late date, and in excellent preservation, but with no inscriptions, the plan of which was taken on the following day. From this place we followed the southern frontier of the Oasis, by Neslet, as far as the ruins of Medînet Mâdi, on LAKE GHARAQ, near which the ancient dams of Lake Mœris projected from the north, and on the 11th July we again arrived at our camp on the ruins of the Labyrinth. We found all well, including Frey, whom we had left indisposed, and whose repeated attacks of illness, probably produced by the climate, cause me some anxiety.
To-morrow I am thinking of going to Cairo with Abeken and Bonomi, to hire a boat for our journey south, and to prepare everything that is requisite for our final departure from the neighbourhood of the capital. We shall take four camels with us for the transport of the monuments which we have collected in the Faiûm, and strike into the shortest road, namely, from here by TAMÎEH, which we did not touch at, on our journey round, and thence across the desert heights which separate this part of the Faiûm from the Nile valley; we shall then descend into it by the Pyramids of Daschûr, and thus hope to reach Cairo in two days and a half.
Letter XIII
Cairo, the 14th August, 1843.
I regret to say that I received such uncomfortable accounts of the state of Frey’s health, soon after our arrival in Cairo, that Abeken and Bonomi at length determined to go to our camp, and to bring him in a litter which they took with them, from the Labyrinth to Zani on the Nile, and thence by water to this place. As soon as Dr. Pruner had seen him, he pronounced that the only advisable course was to let him immediately return to Europe. The liver complaint, under which he was found to be suffering, is incurable in Egypt, and as it had already made great progress, he left us yesterday at mid-day. May the climate of home soon restore our friend’s strength, who is both amiable and full of talent, and is a great loss to us all.
A few days ago, I purchased some Ethiopian Manuscripts for the Library at Berlin, from a Basque, Domingo Lorda, who has lived a long time in Abyssinia, and accompanied D’Abadie on several journeys. He bought them, probably, for a small sum, in a convent situated on the island of Thâna, near Gorata, one day’s journey from the sources of the Blue Nile, whose inhabitants were brought to a state of great distress by locusts. The one contains the history of Abyssinia, from Solomon to Christ, and is said to come from Axum, and to be between five and six hundred years old. This first part of the Abyssinian history, called KEBRE NEGEST, “the Fame of the Kings,” is said to be far more rare than the second, TARIK NEGEST, “the History of the Kings;” but this manuscript also contains at the end a list of the Ethiopian kings since the time of Christ. The largest manuscript, adorned with many great pictures in the Byzantine style, and by what I learn about it from Lieder, almost unique in its kind, contains chiefly the histories of saints. The third contains the still valid Canones of the Church, complete. I hope that it will be an acceptable purchase for our Library.[26]
The purchases for our journey are also now completed; a convenient boat is hired, which will save us from the great difficulties of a land journey, since this, more especially during the impending season of inundation, could scarcely be accomplished.
Letter XIV
Thebes, the 13th October, 1843.
On the 16th August I went from Cairo to the Faiûm, from which our camp broke up on the 21st. Two days later we sailed away from BENI-SUEF, and, sending the camels back to Cairo, only took the asses with us in our boat, as, on considering the matter more attentively, we found that the land journey, originally contemplated by me along the range of the hills some distance from the river on the western side, was quite impracticable during the inundation, and on the eastern bank would have been partly too fatiguing, and partly devoid of objects of interest to us on account of the proximity of the desert frontier on that side, beyond which there is nothing for us to explore. We have, therefore, only made excursions from the boat, sometimes on foot, sometimes on asses, principally to the eastern hills, which are easily reached; but on the western bank, also, we have visited the most important points.
The very day after our departure from Beni-suef we found a small rock-temple in the neighbourhood of the village of SURARIEH, unnoticed by earlier travellers, not even mentioned by Wilkinson, which, as early as the 19th Dynasty, was dedicated by Menephthes, the son of Ramses Miamun, to the Egyptian Venus (Hathor). Farther on are several groups of tombs, which had also hitherto received scarcely any notice, although, from their extreme antiquity, they are peculiarly interesting. The whole of Middle Egypt, judging by the tombs which have been preserved, seems to have principally flourished during the Old Monarchy, before the invasion of the Hyksos, not only during the 12th Dynasty, to which the renowned tombs of Benihassan, Siut, and Berscheh belong, but even as early as the 6th. We have found groups of tombs, of considerable size, from this early period, which belonged to towns whose names even are no longer known in the later Egyptian geography, because they had probably been destroyed by the Hyksos. We remained the longest time in Benihassan, namely, sixteen days. Hence the season has now arrived, which we must not lose for our journey south. In the following places, therefore, notes alone were taken, and paper impressions of a most important kind; for instance, in El Amarna, in Siut, in the venerable Abydos, and in the more recent, but not on that account less magnificent, Temple of Dendera, which is almost in perfect preservation. In Siut we visited the Governor of Upper Egypt, Selîm Pascha, who for several months past has been working an ancient alabaster quarry, which had been re-discovered by the Bedouins, between Berscheh and Gauâta.
The town of SIUT is beautifully built and in a charming situation, especially when viewed from the steep rock on the western bank of the valley close behind it. The view of the overflowed Nile valley from these heights is the most beautiful which we have yet seen, and, at the same time, extremely characteristic of the inundation season, in which we are now travelling. From the foot of the steep rock, a small dam overgrown with sont-trees,[27] and a bridge, leads across to the town, which lies like an island in the boundless sea of inundation. The gardens of Ibrahim Pascha, extending on the left, form another island, green and fresh, covered with trees and brushwood. The town, with its fifteen minarets, rises high above the mounds of rubbish of the ancient Lycopolis. A still larger dam leads from it to the Nile, and, towards the south, other long dams may be seen, like floating threads drawn across the mass of waters. On the other side the Arabian chain of mountains approach tolerably near, by which the valley becomes closed in, forming a picture which can be easily surveyed.
We have been in the royal city of THEBES since the 6th October. Our boat landed us first, under the walls of Luqsor, at the most southern point of the Theban ruins. The strong current of the river has here encroached to within such a short distance of the old temple that it is itself even in considerable danger. I endeavoured to obtain a view over the ruins of Thebes, from the summit of the temple, in order to compare it with the image that I had formed of it from maps and descriptions. The distances, however, are too great to make a good picture. You look upon a wide landscape, in which the scattered groups of temples stand forth as single points, and can only be recognised by one who has a previous knowledge of the subject. Towards the north, at the distance of a short hour, rise the mighty Pylones of KARNAK, which of itself formed a town of temples altogether gigantic and astonishing. We spent the succeeding days in taking a cursory survey of them. On the other side of the river, at the foot of the Libyan range, are the MEMNONIA, once an uninterrupted series of splendid buildings, unrivalled among the monuments of antiquity. Even now the temples of MEDÎNET HÂBU, with their high mounds of rubbish, are distinguishable in the distance, at the southern end of this series, exactly opposite to Luqsor; and at the northern end, an hour from that point down the river, the temple of QURNAH, which is in good preservation; between them both stands the temple of Ramses Miamun (Sesostris), already of great celebrity, from its description by Diodorus. Thus the four Arabian places, Karnak, and Luqsor on the eastern side of the river, Qurnah, and Medînet Hâbu on the western, form a great square, which measures on every side about half a geographical mile, and gives us some notion of the magnitude of the most splendid portion of ancient Thebes. How far the remaining inhabited portion of the City of a Hundred Gates extended towards the east, north, and south, it is difficult to discover now, because all that in the lapse of time has not maintained its original position, has gradually disappeared beneath the annually increasing rise of the soil of the lower plain by the inundation.
No one ever inquires here about the weather, for one day is exactly like the other, serene, clear, and hitherto not too hot. We have no morning or evening red, as there are neither clouds nor vapours; but the first ray of the morning calls forth a world of colours in the bare and rugged limestone mountains closing in around us, and in the brownish glittering desert, contrasted with the black, or green-clothed lower plain, such as is never seen in northern countries. There is scarcely any twilight, as the sun sinks down at once. The separation of night and day is just as sudden as that between meadow and desert; one step, one moment, divides the one from the other. The sombre brilliancy of the moon and starlight nights is so much the more refreshing to the eye which has been dazzled by the ocean light of day. The air is so pure and dry, that except in the immediate vicinity of the river, in spite of the sudden change at sunset, there is no fall of dew. We have almost entirely forgotten what rain is, for it is above six months since it last rained with us in Saqâra. A few days ago we rejoiced, when, towards evening, we discovered some light clouds in the sky to the south-west, which reminded us of Europe. Nevertheless, we do not want coolness even in the daytime, for a light wind is almost always blowing, which does not allow the heat to become too oppressive. Added to this, the Nile water is pleasant to the taste, and maybe enjoyed in great abundance without any detriment.
The clay water-bottles (Qulleh) are invaluable to us; they are composed of fine, porous Nile mud, which allows the water to ooze through them continually; the evaporation of this, as soon as it appears on the warm surface, as is well known, produces cold, and thus, by this simple process, the bottles are constantly kept cool in the hottest period of the day. The drinking-water, on that account, is usually cooler than it is in Europe during the summer. We principally live upon poultry, and, as a change, we occasionally kill a sheep. There are very few vegetables. Every meal is concluded by a dish of rice. For dessert we have the most beautiful yellow melons, or juicy red water-melons. The dates also are excellent, but not to be had everywhere. I have at length, to the great joy of my companions, learned to smoke a Turkish pipe, which keeps me a quarter of an hour in perfect kêf: by this word the Arabs designate their easy repose, their comfort; for as long as one “drinks” the blue smoke of the long pipe from the shallow bowl, so easily overset, it is impossible to leave one’s position, or to undertake anything else. We have a convenient costume—loose trousers of light cotton stuff, and over them a wide long tunic, with short wide sleeves. Besides this I wear a broad, turned-up, grey felt hat, as a European badge, which keeps the Arabs in proper respect. We eat, according to the custom of the country, on a low round table, not a foot high, sitting on cushions, with our legs folded under us. This position has become so convenient to me, that I even write in it, sitting on my couch, the letter portfolio on my knees, as a support. Above me is spread out a canopy of gauze to keep off the flies—this most shameless plague of Egypt during the day—and the gnats during the night. In other respects, we suffer far less from vermin here, than in Italy. We have not yet been bit by scorpions and serpents, but in return there are very malignant wasps, which have frequently stung us.
We shall only remain here till the day after to-morrow, and shall then travel towards the south without stopping. We shall wait for our return to devote as much time and labour as the treasures in this spot demand. At Assuan, on the frontiers of Egypt, we shall, for the first time, change our mode of transport, and send back our great boat, in which we already feel quite at home. On the other side of the cataracts we shall take two smaller boats for our journey onwards.