A thousand miles up the Nile

by Amelia B. Edwards

As neither the stelæ nor the bas-relief would seem to have been observed by previous travelers, I may add for the guidance of others that the round and tower-like rock upon which the former are sculptured lies about a mile to the southward of the sheik’s tomb and palm-tree (a strikingly picturesque bit which no one can fail to notice), and a little beyond some very large excavations near the water’s edge; while the bas-relief is to be found at a short distance below the Coptic convent and cemetery.

Having for nearly twelve miles skirted the base of Gebel Abufayda—by far the finest panoramic stretch of rock scenery on this side of the second cataract—the Nile takes an abrupt bend to the eastward, and thence flows through many miles of cultivated flat. One coming to this sudden elbow the wind, which had hitherto been carrying us along at a pace but little inferior to that of a steamer, now struck us full on the beam and drove the boat to shore with such violence that all the steersman could do was just to run the Philæ’s nose into the bank and steer clear of some ten or twelve native cangias that had been driven in before us. The Bagstones rushed in next; and presently a large iron-built dahabeeyah, having come gallantly along under the cliffs with all sail set, was seen to make a vain struggle at the fatal corner, and then plunge headlong at the bank, like King Agib’s ship upon the Loadstone Mountain.

Imprisoned here all the afternoon, we exchanged visits of condolence with our neighbors in misfortune; had our ears nearly cut to pieces by the driving sand; and failed signally in the endeavor to take a walk on shore. Still the fury of the storm went on increasing. The wind howled; the river raced in turbid waves; the sand drove in clouds; and the face of the sky was darkened as if by a London fog. Meanwhile, one boat after another was hurled to shore, and before nightfall we numbered a fleet of some twenty odd craft, native and foreign.

It took the united strength of both crews all next day to warp the Philæ and Bagstones across the river by means of a rope and an anchor; an expedient that deserves special mention not for its amazing novelty or ingenuity, but because our men declared it to be impracticable. Their fathers, they said, had never done it. Their fathers’ fathers had never done it. Therefore it was impossible. Being impossible, why should they attempt it?

They did attempt it, however, and, much to their astonishment, they succeeded.

It was, I think, toward the afternoon of this second day, when, strolling by the margin of the river, that we first made the acquaintance of that renowned insect, the Egyptian beetle. He was a very fine specimen of his race, nearly half an inch long in the back, as black and shiny as a scarab cut in jet, and busily engaged in the preparation of a large rissole of mud, which he presently began laboriously propelling up the bank. We stood and watched him for some time, half in admiration, half in pity. His rissole was at least four times bigger than himself, and to roll it up that steep incline to a point beyond the level of next summer’s inundation was a labor of Hercules for so small a creature. One longed to play the part of the Deus ex machina and carry it up the bank for him; but that would have been a dénouement beyond his power of appreciation.

We all know the old story of how this beetle lays its eggs by the river’s brink; incloses them in a ball of moist clay; rolls the ball to a safe place on the edge of the desert; buries it in the sand; and when his time comes, dies content, having provided for the safety of his successors. Hence his mythic fame; hence all the quaint symbolism that by degrees attached itself to his little person, and ended by investing him with a special sacredness which has often been mistaken for actual worship. Standing by thus, watching the movements of the creature, its untiring energy, its extraordinary muscular strength, its business-like devotion to the matter in hand, one sees how subtle a lesson the old Egyptian moralists had presented to them for contemplation, and with how fine a combination of wisdom and poetry they regarded this little black scarab not only as an emblem of the creative and preserving power, but perhaps also of the immortality of the soul. As a type, no insect has ever had so much greatness thrust upon him. He became a hieroglyph, and stood for a word signifying both to be and to transform. His portrait was multiplied a million-fold; sculptured over the portals of temples; fitted to the shoulders of a god; engraved on gems; molded in pottery; painted on sarcophagi and the walls of tombs; worn by the living and buried with the dead.

Every traveler on the Nile brings away a handful of the smaller scarabs, genuine or otherwise. Some may not particularly care to possess them; yet none can help buying them, if only because other people do so, or to get rid of a troublesome dealer, or to give to friends at home. I doubt, however, if even the most enthusiastic scarab-fanciers really feel in all its force the symbolism attaching to these little gems, or appreciate the exquisite naturalness of their execution, till they have seen the living beetle at its work.

In Nubia, where the strip of cultivable land is generally but a few feet in breadth, the scarab’s task is comparatively light and the breed multiplies freely. But in Egypt he has often a wide plain to traverse with his burden, and is therefore scarce in proportion to the difficulty with which he maintains the struggle for existence. The scarab race in Egypt would seem indeed to have diminished very considerably since the days of the Pharaohs, and the time is not perhaps far distant when the naturalist will look in vain for specimens on this side of the first cataract. As far as my own experience goes, I can only say that I saw scores of these beetles during the Nubian part of the journey; but that to the best of my recollection this was the only occasion upon which I observed one in Egypt.

The Nile makes four or five more great bends between Gebel Abufayda and Siût; passing Manafalût by the way, which town lies some distance back from the shore. All things taken into consideration—the fitful wind that came and went continually; the tremendous zigzags of the river; the dead calm which befell us when only eight miles from Siût; and the long day of tracking that followed, with the town in sight the whole way—we thought ourselves fortunate to get in by the evening of the third day after the storm. These last eight miles are, however, for open, placid beauty, as lovely in their way as anything north of Thebes. The valley is here very wide and fertile; the town, with its multitudinous minarets, appears first on one side and then on the other, according to the windings of the river; the distant pinky mountains look almost as transparent as the air or the sunshine; while the banks unfold an endless succession of charming little subjects, every one of which looks as if it asked to be sketched as we pass. A shâdûf and a clump of palms—a triad of shaggy black buffaloes, up to their shoulders in the river, and dozing as they stand—a wide-spreading sycamore fig, in the shade of which lie a man and camel asleep—a fallen palm uprooted by the last inundation, with its fibrous roots yet clinging to the bank and its crest in the water—a group of sheiks’ tombs with glistening white cupolas relieved against a background of dark foliage—an old disused water-wheel lying up sidewise against the bank like a huge teetotom, and garlanded with wild tendrils of a gourd—such are a few out of many bits by the way, which, if they offer nothing very new, at all events present the old material under fresh aspects, and in combination with a distance of such ethereal light and shade, and such opalescent tenderness of tone, that it looks more like an air-drawn mirage than a piece of the world we live in.