Travels in the Upper Egyptian deserts

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

The excavation inside the enclosure of El Sargieh.—Page [97].

The Roman station at El Greiyeh. The animal lines. The brick pillars supported the roof under which were the night stalls.—Page [139].

Pl. xvii.

At dawn next morning we set out on foot to climb over the pass to the quarries. The sun was struggling to penetrate the soft mists as we started the actual ascent, and the air was cold and invigorating. Here and there one could detect the old Roman path passing up the hillside, but it was so much broken that a climb up the dry watercourse, across which it zigzagged, was preferable. At the immediate foot of the pass there is a small Roman fort containing three or four rooms, and at the highest point, which is 3150 feet above sea-level, there is a ruined rest-house, where the tired climber, no doubt, was able to obtain at least a pot of water. Here at the summit we had a wonderful view of the surrounding country. Behind us the mountains rose in a series of misty ranges, and before us lay the valley of Gebel Dukhân winding between the porphyry hills, while beyond them the northern mountains rose to some 6000 feet in the distance. The Roman road, descending on this side, was well preserved, and we were able to run down the 1200 feet or so, which brought us breathless to the level of the valley. The temple, town, and quarries lay about a mile down the Wady, at a point where there was a considerable breadth of flat gravel between the hills on either side.

The town ruins—a cluster of crowded houses enclosed by a fortified wall—stand on the slope of the hill. A fine terrace runs along the east side, and up to this a ramp ascends. Passing through the gateway one enters the main street, and the attention is first attracted by an imposing building on the right hand. Here there are several chambers leading into an eight-pillared hall, at the end of which a well-made and well-preserved plunge-bath eloquently tells of the small pleasures of expatriated Roman officers. A turning from the main street brings one into an open courtyard, where there are two ovens and some stone dishes to be seen, besides a large quantity of pottery fragments. Around this in every direction the little huts are huddled, narrow lanes dividing one set of chambers from the next. The town is, of course, very ruined; but it does not require much imagination to people it again with that noisy crowd of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian quarrymen. One sees them prising out the blocks of purple porphyry from the hillside high above the valley, returning in the evening down the broad causeway to the town, or passing up the steps to the temple which stands on a knoll of granite rocks a couple of hundred yards to the north-east.

The steps lead one up to a platform which formed the forecourt of the temple. This court is now covered with the ruins of what was once a fine granite portico rising on the east side. Four columns supported an inscribed architrave and decorated cornice, above which was the pediment or pointed roof. Behind this portico stood the sanctuary, built of broken stones carefully mortared and plastered to the necessary smoothness. A granite doorway led from one side into the vestry. In the forecourt, amidst the ruins, stands the granite altar, in its original position; and near it lies the architrave with the proud inscription: “For the safety and the eternal victory of our Lord Cæsar Trajan Hadrian, absolute, august, and all his house; to the Sun, the great Serapis, and to the co-enshrined gods, this temple, and all that is in it, is dedicated.” Then follow the names of the Governor of Egypt, the Superintendent of the Mines, and other officials.

In the middle of the valley there is the well, which is now choked. A gallery, the roof of which was supported by five pillars, passes in a half-circle round one side of the well; and a shallow drain in the pavement seems to have carried a stream of water along it. Here the workmen could sit in the shade to ease the thirst which exercise on the hot hills so soon creates; and on our return journey up the pass we looked back more than once to this cool gallery and to the plunge-bath with a kind of envy of the past.

The quarries are cut here and there on the hillside without any regularity. The blocks of porphyry were prised out of the rock wherever the work could most easily be carried on, and the action of the years has so dulled the broken surfaces that they now look almost like those of the natural mountain. The blocks were carried down to the Nile, and in fact to Rome, in the rough, without even a preliminary dressing; for the work in this distant place had to be shortened as much as possible.

Looking, in the European museums, at the fine capitals, the polished basins, the statues, and the many other objects cut out of Imperial Porphyry, one has admired the work of the mason or the genius of the artist. But here in the Hills of Smoke one thinks of these antiquities with a feeling bordering on veneration. If the workmanship tells of an art that is dead, how much louder does the material cry out the praises of an energy that is also dead? Each block of stone is the witness of a history of organisation and activity almost beyond thought. This purple porphyry was not known to the ancient Egyptians: a Roman prospector must have searched the desert to find it. One would have thought that the aloofness of the valley from which it is to be procured would have kept its existence the secret of the hills; for on the one side a winding pathway, thirty miles in length, separates the spot from the little-known main road, and on the other side a barrier of steep hills shuts it off from the Wady Bileh.