The glory of the Pharaohs

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

When the great dam at Aswân on the frontier between Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia was built, the Nile valley for some eighty miles southwards was turned into a vast reservoir. The natives were handsomely compensated for the destruction of their houses and the submersion of their land, and their villages were rebuilt on the hillsides at a higher level. The reservoir is full each year from about January to June, while during the remaining months of the year the river resumes its natural level, and the people come down from their lofty dwelling-places to cultivate their small fields, like Mr. and Mrs. Noah from Ararat. Now, however, the dam, having proved so great a success, has been heightened; and in recent years the level of the water in the reservoir has been so increased that the country is flooded for well over a hundred miles. Several ancient buildings and many cemeteries and other remains have gone under the water; and for half the year the country is like a great lake with temples for islands. In order to decide what steps had to be taken to prevent any loss to Egyptology in this respect, the present writer made an elaborate report for the Government in 1906-7; and as a result of this a large sum of money—£60,000 or £70,000—was voted for archæological works. Not only was every temple repaired, strengthened, and thoroughly studied and photographed, but every single cemetery and ancient site was exhaustively excavated. Thus, not a scrap of information was lost to science, and every possible precaution was taken to safeguard the interest of the antiquary.

It was early in the summer of 1912 that I paid my last visit to Lower Nubia, on board a P.W.D. steamer; and I should like to record here some unofficial impressions of this very interesting reach of the Nile.

Upon the first day of our journey we passed through the five great locks of the dam which mount to the higher level like some huge Brobdingnagian stairway, and steamed southwards over the wide stretch of the pent-up waters, past groves of palm-trees standing deep in the flood, past the rough points of submerged rocks which once formed the promontories of the mainland, past slopes of golden sand which had formerly descended to the edge of cultivated fields, but now slid straight into the water in the manner of a perilous chute. It was our plan to push through to Abu Simbel, which is some miles south of the area to be affected by the new flood-level, and then to examine the main ancient sites on the way down. At mid-morning we steamed through the magnificent Pass of Kalâbsheh, where towering granite cliffs drop sheer into the water and rugged piles of that splendid stone form islands in the river; and towards sunset we passed the temple of Dakkeh, whose lofty pylons can be seen for many a mile. About eight o’clock in the evening, when darkness had fallen and the sky was massed over with stars, we halted near the temple of Wady Sabu’a, and by the light of a lantern made our way to it over the soft sand.

The work in this temple is poor. The edges of the blocks of stone with which the walls are built are roughly trimmed, and the crevices are filled with plaster to hide the reproach of their bad workmanship. One wonders how much the dishonest contractor, or perhaps the Viceroy of Rameses II., in whose reign it was built, obtained out of the transaction; for, knowing modern Egypt and the tortuous ways of the native architect, one has developed a sort of jocular misanthropy that is not bounded by the years. The friend who was with me, and who is a highly cultured barbarian, expressed unmitigated disapproval of the entire place, and begged to be conducted back to the steamer with all dispatch; but to me the ruin, although undoubtedly a monument of slovenly work, has a rugged dignity. In the shifting light of the lantern which caused the shadows, like flibbertigibbets, to perform the most grotesque antics, and the decorated walls to stand out from them in a kind of luminous animation, one felt that there was still something to be learnt from it.

At dawn next day we steamed onwards, rounded the great bend of the Nile between Korôsko and Derr, and halted during the morning at the foot of the hill of Kasr Ibrîm upon which the commanding ruins of an ancient fortress basks in the sunshine. One climbs up a winding path upon the north side of the hill, and mounts under impregnable walls to the narrow gateway, which it is almost surprising to find open. From inside this doorway a staircase rises to the higher levels of the hill; and now the ruined walls of the barracks cluster in close array before one, while over to the right another and more elaborate doorway, flanked by massive pylons, stands almost on the edge of the cliffs. These two doorways date from about B.C. 25, when the Roman General Petronius placed a garrison here after he had defeated the one-eyed Ethiopian queen, Kandake, and her thirty thousand warriors and driven them into the Sudan. A few hundred years later a Byzantine garrison erected a Christian church on the hill-top a short way to the south; and threading one’s way through the narrow streets between the deserted houses, this building suddenly comes into view. The ruin has a peculiar charm. The masonry arches and the well-built apse have, at the first glance, almost a Norman appearance; and here, as it were, at the top of the world, the scene is so foreign to Egypt that it holds all the charm of novelty to the Egyptologist, tired, as to some extent he must be, of the temples beside the Nile.

The cliffs on the west side of the ruins drop almost sheer to the river, and from the top one may throw down stones which strike the green water far out of earshot and only just within sight. Sitting here in the morning sunshine, after our hot climb up the hill, a silent contentment possessed us which no words of mine can attempt to express. The river, the cultivation, and the desert were stretched out below us, all far away, and inviting only a mild quizzical contemplation. From this eminence we patronised Egypt, and smiled at all her petty troubles. What a place, we both declared, in which to build a little house! We could sit at the door all day long, smoking a pipe and musing upon the world’s worries at this safe distance from them. On second thoughts, however, my friend came to the conclusion that in a dreamer’s life of this kind a very good piano would be necessary and a few reproductions of great pictures. A small library, too, would be essential, and perhaps a few congenial friends. I was about to discourse with some heat upon the oppressiveness of culture and the intolerable demands it makes upon its devotees, chaining them to cities and communities wherein alone its rites may be practised, when I was checked by a glance at my watch; and forthwith we descended the hill down to the steamer and its sun-baked decks.

We reached Abu Simbel towards sunset, and at once went ashore. The temple is cut out of a bluff of rock which overlooks the Nile a few miles before the Sudan frontier is reached. It was dedicated to the hawk-god Harmachis, one of the forms of the sun-god; and it was so designed that the rays of the rising sun strike right at the temple, illuminating the façade, and penetrating at certain times of the year into the innermost sanctuary, where the statue of Rameses the Great awaits it with the gods. The four enormous figures of Rameses which sit in such solemnity at the entrance, as though to greet the sun, will be familiar to the reader; and those who have had the good fortune to visit this part of the world will remember that a great drift of sand had swept down the hillside at the north of the temple and had threatened in a few years to engulf it entirely. In 1909 this drift had pushed almost to the doorway of the temple and had thus covered the feet of the two colossi on that side of the façade. The terrace in front of the great statues had here been hidden for thousands of years, and I suggested that if the entire drift were removed some important discoveries might be made. These hopes were fully realised when the work was undertaken in 1909-10 by the Department of Antiquities under the direction of Monsieur Barsanti. When the drift had been attacked by some hundreds of men and had been carted away in trucks to form a large and level platform in front of the temple, the buried terrace was exposed and was found to be ornamented with a series of statues: figures of the hawk, of the sun, and of the king alternating at short intervals along its whole length. These figures, sculptured in pale-coloured sandstone, now stand like sentinels at the feet of the great deeper-toned colossi, and add very considerably to the sense of size and majesty which these huge forms inspire. At the north end of the terrace a small open chapel was discovered, on the east side of which were two miniature pylons. In this chapel stood a high altar, and upon this altar four sacred apes, sculptured in stone, were found. They crouched with their hands raised in adoration to the rising sun, which, as it topped the eastern hills, would strike right upon their faces between the pylons. Before them stood two small obelisks, symbols of the sun; and near by, upon another altar, was a small shrine containing another ape and a small scarab representing the re-creation of life at dawn.

The whole temple is built for the one hour of sunrise; and therefore the next morning we went ashore once more before the sun had risen. Sitting in front of the temple, facing the colossi, we watched the light increase upon the stone, the colour of which grew ever more warm and golden. It was as though the sandstone were illuminated from within, like thin alabaster. The serene faces of the great statues became as nearly godlike as any work of man can become. Their calm unmoved greeting to the sun, so different from that of us men, who must needs shade our eyes, being unable to look him in the face, had something sublime about it not convincingly to be explained away, and not to be diminished by the obvious fact that they were but masses of natural rock. I am not convinced that the mountains are dead, nor can I tell what gods of the western desert may not look out from this sacred hill through the eyes which the old men of Egypt have here made for them. Although I have seen this temple so many times, have watched the broken fragments of these colossi pinned back into position with iron bars, and have reckoned the tons of cement which have been shot into the cavities and cracks in their interior, yet still the spell of their monstrous dignity remains, they still seem to look to the eastern horizon with all the expectancy of living nature, and still speak with the voice of the winds of the dawn.

As the sun rose high and the first mystery of the daylight passed into a less suggestive glare, we entered the inner halls of the temple, which are excavated in the rock, and wandered from room to room. The light here was strong enough at this time of day to illuminate the whole interior, so that even the corners were not in darkness. Some of the reliefs are extremely well executed, and there is one scene in particular, upon the left wall, representing the Pharaoh in the act of slaying a foreign soldier in battle, which is one of the great masterpieces of Egyptian art, though I do not find it quoted in any of the textbooks. At length we passed out into the sunlight once more, and, after lingering a short while longer, the internal call for breakfast induced us to return to the steamer. We weighed anchor at once, and in a couple of hours or so reached the village of Toshkeh, on our return journey down stream.

On this occasion we paid no more than a rapid visit to the ancient cemeteries which lie a few hundred yards from the river at this point; but when I was here in 1910, I went back some six miles into the western desert to visit the field of the battle of Toshkeh, where on August 3, 1889, Sir Francis (now Lord) Grenfell defeated an army of Dervishes under Wad er Nejumi. The Dervishes were invading Egypt along the desert route, which avoids the twisting course of the Nile, and at this point they were met by the opposing forces and practically annihilated. The battlefield is most interesting; for many of the dead still lie upon the ground where they fell, and in all directions the marks of the conflict are apparent, even the tracks of the gun-carriages being still visible passing across the firm surface of the sand. On a mound of rock, at the foot of which one may see the neat squares and circles of pebbles marking out the general’s quarters on the eventful day, there is a monument under which the Egyptian soldiers who fell are buried; and a commemorative inscription in marble proclaims to the unvisited and silent desert around how these men “gave their lives for their country.” I trust that I shall not appear cynical if I record here the impression of surprise which one could not help feeling upon seeing these fine old British sentiments applied to Egyptian soldiery. The Egyptian Tommy, good fellow that he is, has not yet learnt to bother himself about patriotism, though in isolated cases he is beginning to read newspapers and to fill his head with sentiments to which it is difficult to put a name. It was cruel fate that caused him to be conscribed for the army, and something uncommonly like the black magic of an enemy that sent him in the month of August to fight in Nubia. What the fuss was about hardly concerned him; and, knowing the cheery, inconsequent fellah, it requires a considerable stretch of the imagination to suppose that he felt possessed of a country to defend or was prepared to give his life for it.