Travels in the Upper Egyptian deserts

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

We mounted our camels again at about eleven o’clock, and rode towards the wall of the Medîk es-Salâm hills ahead, passing into their shadows soon after noonday. We halted for luncheon in the shade of a group of rocks, and our meal was enlivened by the presence of two butterflies which seemed out of place in the barren desert, and yet in harmony with the breezy, light-hearted spirit of the place. Early in the afternoon we rode on, but an hour had not passed when some obvious inscriptions on the rocks to the left of the track, opposite a point where the road bends sharply to the right, attracted my attention. These proved to date from the Middle Empire, about B.C. 2000, and no doubt marked a camp of that date. The names of various officials were given, and a prayer or two to the gods was to be read. Rounding the corner, we had no sooner settled ourselves to the camels’ trot than another group of inscriptions on the rocks to the right of the path necessitated a further halt. Here there were two very important graffiti of the time of Akhnaton; and considerable light is thrown by one of them upon the fascinating period of the religious revolution of that king. One sees three cartouches, of which the first is that of Queen Thiy, the second reads Amonhotep (IV.), and the third seems to have given the name Akhnaton; but both this cartouche and that of Thiy are erased. The three cartouches are placed together above the symbols of sovereignty, and below the rays of the sun’s disk, thus showing that Akhnaton was but a boy of tender years under his mother’s guidance when he first came to the throne, and that the Aton worship had already begun. It would be too long a matter to explain the significance of this inscription here, but those who are of an inquiring mind may turn to the article on this subject in the October number of ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’ for 1907, where I have described how the recently found mummy of Akhnaton proved to be that of a very young man.

The shadows were lengthening when we once more mounted and trotted up the valley, which presently led into more open ground; but after half an hour’s ride a second Roman station came into sight, and again the grumbling camels had to kneel. The building is much ruined, and is not of great interest to those who have already seen the Hydreuma and other stations. As we continued the journey the sun set behind us, and in the growing moonlight the valley looked ghostly and wonderfully beautiful. The shapes of the rocks became indistinct, and one was hardly aware when the well known as Bir Hammamât was at last reached. This well lies in a flat, gravelly amphitheatre amidst the rugged hills, which press in on all sides. It is in all about six hours’ ride—i.e., twenty-eight or thirty miles—from Lagêta; but our several halts had spread the journey over twice that length of time. The well is circular and fairly large, and stones dropped into its pitch-dark depths seemed a long time in striking the water. A subterranean stairway, restored in recent years by a mining company, runs down at one side to the water’s level; and at its doorway in the moonlight we sat and smoked until the baggage camels came up.

The next morning we rode up a valley which was now tortuous and narrow. This is the Wady Hammamât of the archæologist, and the Wady Fowakhîeh of the natives. Dark, threatening hills towered on either side, as though eager to prison for ever the deeds once enacted at their feet. One’s voice echoed amongst the rocks, and the wind carried the sound down the valley and round the bend, adding to it its own quiet whispers. A ride of about half an hour’s length brought us to some ruined huts where the ancient quarrymen had lived in the days of the Pharaohs. From this point onwards for perhaps a mile the rocks on either side are dotted with inscriptions, from which a part of the history of the valley may be learnt. The place is full of whispers. As the breeze blows round the rocks and up the silent water-courses it is as though the voices of men long since forgotten were drifting uncertainly by. One feels as though the rocks were peopled with insistent entities, all muttering the tales of long ago. Behind this great rock there is something laughing quietly to itself; up this dry waterfall there is a sort of whimpering; and here in this silent recess one might swear that the word to be silent had been passed around. It is only the wind and the effect of the contrast between the exposed and the still places sheltered by the rocks; but, with such a history as is writ upon its walls, one might believe the valley to be crowded with the ghosts of those who have suffered or triumphed in it.

Under the tamarisks of the oasis of Lagêta.—Page [31].

Bir Hammamât, looking south.—Page [36].

Pl. v.

Wady Fowakhîeh extends from the Bir Hammamât to the well known as Bir Fowakhîeh, which lies in the open circus at the east end of the valley. Although the tuff quarried here is of a blue or olive-green colour, the surface of the rocks, except where they are broken, is a sort of chocolate-brown. One thus obtains an extraordinary combination of browns and blues, which with the flush of the sunset and the dim purple of the distant hill-tops forms a harmony as beautiful as any the world knows. The flat, gravel bed of the valley is from fifty to a hundred yards wide, and along this level surface run numerous camel-tracks, more or less parallel with one another. Besides the inscriptions there are other traces of ancient work: an unfinished shrine, and a sarcophagus, abandoned owing to its having cracked, are to be seen where the workmen of some five-and-twenty centuries ago left them; and here and there a group of ruined huts is to be observed.

Amidst these relics of the old world our tents were pitched, having been removed from Bir Hammamât as soon as breakfast had been finished; and with camera, note-book, and sketching apparatus, the four of us dispersed in different directions, my own objective, of course, being the inscriptions. The history of Wady Fowakhîeh begins when the history of Egypt begins, and one must look back into the dim uncertainties of the archaic period for the first evidences of the working of the quarries in this valley. Many beautifully made bowls and other objects of this tuff are found in the graves of Dynasty I., fifty-five centuries ago; and my friends and I, scrambling over the rocks, were fortunate enough to find in a little wady leading northwards from the main valley a large rock-drawing and inscription of this date. A “vase-maker” here offers a prayer to the sacred barque of the hawk-god Horus, which is drawn so clearly that one may see the hawk standing upon its shrine in the boat, an upright spear set before the door; and one may observe the bull’s head, so often found in primitive countries, affixed to the prow; while the barque itself is shown to be standing upon a sledge in order that it might be dragged over the ground.