A thousand miles up the Nile

by Amelia B. Edwards

A great double doorway, a hall of columns and a double sanctuary are said to be yet perfect, though no longer accessible. The roofing-blocks of three halls, one behind the other, and a few capitals are yet visible behind the portico.

What more may lie buried below the surface none can tell. We only know that an ancient city and a mediæval hamlet have been slowly engulfed; and that an early temple, contemporary with the Temple of Amada, once stood within the sacred inclosure. The sand here has been accumulating for two thousand years. It lies forty feet deep, and has never been excavated. It will never be excavated now, for the Nile is gradually sapping the bank and carrying away piecemeal from below what the desert has buried from above. Half of one noble pylon—a cataract of sculptured blocks—strews the steep slope from top to bottom. The other half hangs suspended on the brink of the precipice. It cannot hang so much longer. A day must soon come when it will collapse with a crash and thunder down like its fellow.

Between Kom Ombo and Silsilis, we lost our painter. Not that he either strayed or was stolen; but that, having accomplished the main object of his journey, he was glad to seize the first opportunity of getting back quickly to Cairo. That opportunity—represented by a noble duke honeymooning with a steam-tug—happened half-way between Kom Ombo and Silsilis. Painter and duke being acquaintances of old, the matter was soon settled. In less than a quarter of an hour, the big picture and all the paraphernalia of the studio were transported from the stern-cabin of the Philæ to the stern-cabin of the steam-tug; and our painter—fitted out with an extempore canteen, a cook-boy, a waiter, and his fair share of the necessaries of life—was soon disappearing gayly in the distance at the rate of twenty miles an hour. If the happy couple, so weary of head-winds, so satiated with temples, followed that vanishing steam-tug with eyes of melancholy longing, the writer at least asked nothing better than to drift on with the Philæ.

Still, the Nile is long, and life is short; and the tale told by our log-book was certainly not encouraging. When we reached Silsilis on the morning of the 17th of March the north wind had been blowing with only one day’s intermission since the 1st of February.

At Silsilis, one looks in vain for traces of that great barrier which once blocked the Nile at this point. The stream is narrow here, and the sand-stone cliffs come down on both sides to the water’s edge. In some places there is space for a footpath; in others, none. There are also some sunken rocks in the bed of the river—upon one of which, by the way, a Cook’s steamer had struck two days before. But of such a mass as could have dammed the Nile, and, by its disruption, not only have caused the river to desert its bed at Philæ,[176] but have changed the whole physical and climatic conditions of Lower Nubia, there is no sign whatever.

The Arabs here show a rock fantastically quarried in the shape of a gigantic umbrella, to which they pretend some king of old attached one end of a chain with which he barred the Nile. It may be that in this apocryphal legend there survives some memory of the ancient barrier.

The cliffs of the western bank are rich in memorial niches, votive shrines, tombs, historical stela, and inscriptions. These last date from the sixth to the twenty-second dynasties. Some of the tombs and alcoves are very curious. Ranged side by side in a long row close above the river, and revealing glimpses of seated figures and gaudy decorations within, they look like private boxes with their occupants. In most of these we found mutilated triads of gods,[177] sculptured and painted; and in one larger than the rest were three niches, each containing three deities.

The great speos of Horemheb, the last Pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty, lies farthest north, and the memorial shrines of the Rameses family lie farthest south of the series. The first is a long gallery, like a cloister supported on four square columns; and is excavated parallel with the river. The walls inside and out are covered with delicately executed sculptures in low relief, some of which yet retain traces of color. The triumph of Horemheb returning from conquest in the land of Kush, and the famous subject on the south wall described by Mariette[178] as one of the few really lovely things in Egyptian art have been too often engraved to need description. The votive shrines of the Rameses family are grouped altogether in a picturesque nook green with bushes to the water’s edge. There are three, the work of Seti I, Rameses II, and Menepthah—lofty alcoves, each like a little proscenium, with painted cornices and side pillars, and groups of kings and gods still bright with color. In most of the votive sculptures of Silsilis there figure two deities but rarely seen elsewhere; namely Sebek, the crocodile god, and Hapi-Mu, the lotus-crowned god of the Nile. This last was the tutelary deity of the spot, and was worshiped at Silsilis with special rites. Hymns, in his honor are found carved here and there upon the rocks.[179] Most curious of all, however, is a goddess named Ta-ur-t,[180] represented in one of the side subjects of the shrine of Rameses II. This charming person, who has the body of a hippopotamus and the face of a woman, wears a tie-wig and a robe of state with five capes, and looks like a cross between a lord chancellor and a coachman. Behind her stand Thoth and Nut; all three receiving the homage of Queen Nefertari, who advances with an offering of two sistrums. As a hippopotamus crowned with the disk and plumes, we had met with this goddess before. She is not uncommon as an amulet; and the writer had already sketched her at Philæ, where she occupies a prominent place in the façade of the Mammisi. But the grotesque elegance of her attire at Silsilis is, I imagine, quite unique.

TA-UR-T (SILSILIS). TA-UR-T (PHILÆ).