Mons Claudianus. Pedestal of the altar in the forecourt of the Temple. The altar itself is seen broken in the foreground.—Page [126].
Pl. xxii.
The fact that those far-off days are so identical with those we live in does not, however, speak to the mind of the changelessness of things, of the constancy of human customs. That is a minor thought. It tells rather of our misconception of the nature of Time; it shows how difficult it is to judge the ages by the standard of human experience. In looking at these almost unharmed relics of a life which ceased before our remotest English history had begun, one sees that their modern appearance is not so much due to the persistence of custom as it is to the shortness of time since the town was built. Two thousand years is not a period which we have the right to call long: it is but an hour in the duration of man’s existence upon earth. “A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone,” runs the old hymn; and one feels that the ages since this town was built must indeed be but an evening to One whose laws of Decay and Change have not found time in them to show more than a few signs of their working. As one entered the temple in the twilight, and aroused unaccustomed echoes in the silence of its halls, the thought was that one had come rudely to awaken the Past; and, as the degenerate son of a race that had outlived its miracles, to bring the tidings that the gods were dead. But when the newness, the freshness of parts of the buildings, had opened the doors of the mind, the thought was only that the gods were still living and mighty who could think so lightly of twenty long centuries.
On the following morning I busied myself in taking notes and photographs amongst the ruins; and somewhat before noon the camp was struck. The road, now leading westwards towards Keneh, passed for the main part of the ride along a wide valley of great beauty; and after trotting for about three and a half hours we passed a small ancient quarry of fine, small-grained, grey granite, near which a few huts were grouped. Towards sunset we crossed the brow of a hill, and so descended into the Wady Fatîreh, where we camped near the well of that name. Here there is a Roman station differing very slightly from those already described. It lies about five and a half hours’ trot from Mons Claudianus, and was thus the first night’s halting-place for express caravans on the road from that town to Keneh.
As darkness fell I was sitting in the fortress questioning the guide as to the road, when we were both startled by the sound of falling stones, and looking up we saw a large dog-like creature disappearing over the wall. Examining the footprints afterwards, one saw them to be the heavy marks of a hyæna; but no more was heard of him. Hyænas are by no means rare in the desert, though it is not usual to find them so far back from the Nile as this. In sleeping out in the desert travellers warn one to be careful, for a hyæna, they say, might snap at a foot protruding from the blankets, just as a man might take a biscuit from the sideboard; but I do not recollect hearing of anybody who has ever been attacked.
The ancient Egyptians used to eat hyænas, and the scenes in the early tombs show them being fattened up in the farms. Men are seen flinging the unfortunate creatures on their backs, their legs being tied, while others force goose-flesh down their throats. Probably the archaic hunter in the desert ate hyæna-flesh for want of other meat, and the custom took hold amongst the sporting families of dynastic times; for with proper feeding there is no reason to suppose that the meat would be objectionable. The old guide told me, as we sat in the darkness, that there are several trappers who make their living by snaring hyænas, and there is no part of the animal which has not a marketable value. The skin has its obvious uses; the skull is sold as a charm, and brings luck to any house under the threshold of which it is buried; the fat is roasted and eaten as a great delicacy; and the flesh is also used for eating, and for medical purposes, certain parts being stewed down and swallowed by women who desire to produce a family in spite of Nature’s unwillingness.
Mons Claudianus. The first heated room of the Bath-house. The doorway on the left leads into the warmer room. The perpendicular cut in the left wall near the corner is one of the recesses in which the hot-air pipes were fixed. Page [125].
