A thousand miles up the Nile

by Amelia B. Edwards

Rowing round presently to Kobban—the river running wide with the sand island between—we land under the walls of a huge crude brick structure, black with age, which at first sight looks quite shapeless; but which proves to be an ancient Egyptian fortress, buttressed, towered, loop-holed, finished at the angles with the invariable molded torus, and surrounded by a deep dry moat, which is probably yet filled each summer by the inundation.

Now, of all rare things in the valley of the Nile, a purely secular ruin is the rarest; and this, with the exception of some foundations of dwellings here and there, is the first we have seen. It is probably very, very old; as old as the days of Thothmes III, whose name is found on some scattered blocks about a quarter of a mile away, and who built two similar fortresses at Semneh, thirty-five miles above Wady Halfeh. It may be even a thousand years older still, and date from the time of Amenemhat III, whose name is also found on a stela near Kobban.[162] For here was once an ancient city, when Pselcis (now Dakkeh) was but a new suburb on the opposite bank. The name of this ancient city is lost, but it is by some supposed to be identical with the Metachompso of Ptolemy.[163] As the suburb grew the mother town declined, and in time the suburb became the city and the city became the suburb. The scattered blocks aforesaid, together with the remains of a small temple, yet mark the position of the elder city.

The walls of this most curious and interesting fortress have probably lost much of their original height. They are in some parts thirty feet thick, and nowhere less than twenty. Vertical on the inside, they are built at a buttress-slope outside, with additional shallow buttresses at regular distances. These last, as they can scarcely add to the enormous strength of the original wall, were probably designed for effect. There are two entrances to the fortress; one in the center of the north wall, and one in the south. We enter the inclosure by the last named, and find ourselves in the midst of an immense parallelogram measuring about four hundred and fifty feet from east to west, and perhaps three hundred feet from north to south.

All within these bounds is a wilderness of ruin. The space looks large enough for a city, and contains what might be the débris of a dozen cities. We climb huge mounds of rubbish; skirt cataracts of broken pottery; and stand on the brink of excavated pits honeycombed forty feet below, with brick foundations. Over these mounds and at the bottom of these pits swarm men, women, and children, filling and carrying away basket-loads of rubble. The dust rises in clouds. The noise, the heat, the confusion, are indescribable. One pauses, bewildered, seeking in vain to discover in this mighty maze any indication of a plan. It is only by an effort that one gradually realizes how the place is but a vast shell, and how all these mounds and pits mark the site of what was once a huge edifice rising tower above tower to a central keep, such as we see represented in the battle-subjects of Abou Simbel and Thebes.

That towered edifice and central keep—quarried, broken up, carried away piecemeal, reduced to powder, and spread over the land as manure—has now disappeared almost to its foundations. Only the well in the middle of the inclosure, and the great wall of circuit remain. That wall is doomed, and will by and by share the fate of the rest. The well, which must have been very deep, is choked with rubbish to the brim. Meanwhile, in order to realize what the place in its present condition is like, one need but imagine how the Tower of London would look if the whole of the inner buildings—white tower, chapel, armory, governor’s quarters, and all—were leveled in shapeless ruin, and only the outer walls and moat were left.

Built up against the inner side of the wall of circuit are the remains of a series of massive towers, the tops of which, as they are, strangely enough, shorter than the external structure, can never have communicated with the battlements, unless by ladders. The finest of these towers, together with a magnificent fragment of wall, faces the eastern desert.

Going out by the north entrance, we find the sides of the gateway, and even the steps leading down into the moat, in perfect preservation; while at the base of the great wall, on the outer side facing the river, there yet remains a channel or conduit about two feet square, built and roofed with stone, which in Murray is described as a water-gate.

The sun is high, the heat is overwhelming, the felucca waits; and we turn reluctantly away, knowing that between here and Cairo we shall see no more curious relics of the far-off past than this dismantled stronghold. It is a mere mountain of unburned brick; altogether unlovely: admirable only for the gigantic strength of its proportions; pathetic only in the abjectness of its ruin. Yet it brings the lost ages home to one’s imagination in a way that no temple could ever bring them. It dispels for a moment the historic glamor of the sculptures, and compels us to remember those nameless and forgotten millions, of whom their rulers fashioned soldiers in time of war and builders in time of peace.

Our adventures by the way are few and far between; and we now rarely meet a dahabeeyah. Birds are more plentiful than when we were in this part of the river a few weeks ago. We see immense flights of black and white cranes congregated at night on the sand-banks; and any number of quail may be had for the shooting. It is matter for rejoicing when the idle man goes out with his gun and brings home a full bag; for our last sheep was killed before we started for Wady Halfeh, and our last poultry ceased cackling at Abou Simbel.

One morning early, we see a bride taken across the river in a big boat full of women and girls, who are clapping their hands and shrilling the tremulous zagharett. The bride—a chocolate beauty with magnificent eyes—wears a gold brow-pendant and nose-ring, and has her hair newly plaited in hundreds of tails, finished off at the ends with mud pellets daubed with yellow ocher. She stands surrounded by her companions, proud of her finery, and pleased to be stared at by the Ingleezeh.