Travels in the Upper Egyptian deserts

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

The night spent at Fatîreh was again bitterly cold, and a violent wind necessitated a tussle with tent-ropes and pegs: a form of exercise as annoying in the daytime as any that exists, and in the shivering night-time unspeakable. A couple of hours’ riding next day brought us to the end of the mountainous country and into the open desert. For the first time for several days the sun streamed down from a cloudless sky, but the strong north wind continued to blow in full force; and as we trotted over the level plains we were half-blinded by the stinging sand. The peaked hills behind us rose from a sea of tearing sand, and before us in the distance rose low, undulating clay mounds, beyond which one could catch a glimpse of the limestone cliffs so typical of the Nile valley. In the afternoon we crossed these mounds and descended into a very maze of hillocks, amidst which we camped. Amongst these mounds we met a couple of Bedwin, the purpose of whose presence was entirely obscure. Our guide exchanged the usual greetings with them, and then in a low voice began to talk of the miserable dog which trotted dejectedly behind his camel. Again he pointed to his almost empty bag of food, and at last dismounted, fastened a rope to the creature’s neck, and handed it to the Bedwin. The usual howls floated to us on the wind as we rode onwards, but the high spirits of the guide at his freedom from any further responsibility was a real pleasure to witness.

Mons Claudianus. A large granite column lying to the north-east of the town. The back wall of the town is seen behind the column, above which the Temple buildings are seen at the foot of the granite hills.—Page [127].

Mons Claudianus. Large granite columns lying at the foot of a quarry west of the town.—Page [127].

Pl. xxiv.

Early in the following morning I visited the Roman station of Greiyeh, which lies some seven hours’ trot from Fatîreh, and about six hours, or rather more, from Keneh, and was thus the first night’s halting-place out from the Nile, or the second from Mons Claudianus. The station is, as usual, a rectangular enclosure, in which several rooms are constructed. Particularly well preserved are the animal lines, which lie to the west of the station. They consist of a courtyard in which fourteen rows of stalls are built, while down either side there has been a shed with a roof supported by a row of pillars. Not far away is the ancient well, enclosed in a small compound.

This is the last of the Roman stations, and having passed it, the ancient world seemed to slip back out of one’s reach. The camels were set at a hard trot over the now flat and burning sand, and by noon the distant palms of Keneh were in sight floating above the mirage. As the houses of the town grew more and more distinct in the dazzling sunlight, the practical concerns of one’s work came hurrying to mind; and in times and trains, baggage and bustle, the quiet desert, with its ghosts of Rome, faded away as fades some wonderful dream when the sleeper wakes.

VI.
THE TEMPLE OF WADY ABÂD.

The small shrine in the Eastern Desert, which I have here called the Temple of Wady Abâd, is known to Egyptologists as the Temple of Redesiyeh, although it is thirty-seven miles or more from the village on the Nile, five miles above Edfu, which bears that name. Redesiyeh seems to have been the point from which Lepsius, the German archæologist, and other early travellers set out to visit the desert shrine; and hence the name of this wholly unimportant village was given to the ruin, and nobody has bothered to find one more suitable. By the natives the building is called El Kaneis, “the Chapel”; and since it is situated in the well-known Wady Abâd, it would seem most natural to call it the “Chapel, or Temple, of Wady Abâd.” Modern prospectors and mining engineers have been puzzled to know what Redesiyeh has to do with the place; and the fact that an old German antiquarian half a century ago collected his camels at that village being wholly without significance to them, they have regarded the word Redesiyeh as a probable corruption of Rhodesia, and have spoken, to the amazement and confusion of the uninitiate, of the Temple of Rhodesia in the hills of the Upper Egyptian Desert.