Travels in the Upper Egyptian deserts

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

Near these wells there are sometimes a few Bedwin to be found tending their little herds of goats: quiet, harmless sons of the desert, who generally own allegiance to some Shêkh living in the Nile valley. One’s guides and camel-men exchange greetings with them, and pass the latest news over the camp fires. Often, however, one may journey for many days without meeting either a human being or a four-footed animal, though on the well-marked tracks the prints of goats and goatherds, camels and camel-men, are apparent.

No matter in what direction one travels, hardly a day passes on which one does not meet with some trace of ancient activity. Here it will be a deserted gold-mine, there a quarry; here a ruined fortress or town, and there an inscription upon the rocks. Indications of the present day are often so lacking, and Time seems to be so much at a standstill, that one slips back in imagination to the dim elder days. The years fall from one like a garment doffed, and one experiences a sense of relief from their weight. A kind of exhilaration, moreover, goes with the thought of the life of the men of thousands of years ago who lived amongst these changeless hills and valleys. Their days were so full of adventure: they were beset with dangers. One has but to look at the fortified camps, the watch-towers on the heights, the beacons along the highroads, to realise how brave were the “olden times.” One of the peculiar charms of these hills of the Eastern Desert is their impregnation with the atmosphere of a shadowy adventurous past. One’s mind is conscious, if it may be so expressed, of the ghosts of old sights, the echoes of old sounds. Dead ambitions, dead terrors, drift through these valleys on the wind, or lurk behind the tumbled rocks. Rough inscriptions on these rocks tell how this captain or that centurion here rested, and on the very spot the modern traveller rests to ease the self-same aches and to enjoy the self-same shade before moving on towards an identical goal in the east.

On the third or fourth day after leaving the Nile one passes beneath the mountains, which here rise sometimes to as much as 6000 feet; and beyond these the road slopes through the valleys down to the barren Red Sea coast, which may be any distance from 100 to 400 miles from the Nile. Kossair is the one town on the coast opposite Upper Egypt, as it was also in ancient times; and Berenice, opposite Lower Nubia, was the only other town north of Sudan territory. Kossair does a fast-diminishing trade with Arabia, and a handful of Egyptian coastguards is kept mildly busy in the prevention of smuggling. The few inhabitants of the Egyptian coast fish, sleep, say their prayers, or dream in the shade of their hovels until death at an extremely advanced age releases them from the boredom of existence. Those of them who are of Arab stock sometimes enliven their days by shooting one another in a more or less sporting manner, and by wandering to other and more remote settlements thereafter; but those of Egyptian blood have not the energy even for this amount of exertion. There is a lethargy over the desert which contrasts strangely with one’s own desire for activity under the influence of the sun and the wind, and of the records of ancient toil which are to be observed on all sides. It must be that we of the present day come as the sons of a race still in its youth; and in this silent land we meet only with the worn-out remnant of a people who have been old these thousands of years.

There was a threefold reason for the activities of the ancients in the Eastern Desert. Firstly, from Koptos, a city on the Nile not far from Thebes, to Kossair there ran the great trade-route with Arabia, Persia, and India; from Suez to Koptos there was a route by which the traders from Syria often travelled; from Edfu to Berenice there was a trade-route for the produce of Southern Arabia and the ancient land of Pount; while other roads from point to point of the Nile were often used as short-cuts. Secondly, in this desert there were very numerous gold mines, the working of which was one of the causes which made Egypt the richest country of the ancient world. And thirdly, the ornamental stones which were to be quarried in the hills were in continuous requisition for the buildings and statuary of Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Rome.

There is much to be said in regard to the gold-mining, but here space will not permit of more than the most cursory review of the information. Gold was used in Egypt at a date considerably prior to the beginning of written history in Dynasty I., and there are many archaic objects richly decorated with that metal. The situation of many of the early cities of the Nile valley is due solely to this industry. When two cities of high antiquity are in close proximity to one another on opposite banks of the river, as is often the case in Upper Egypt, one generally finds that the city on the western bank is the older of the two. In the case of Diospolis Parva and Khenoboskion, which stand opposite to one another, the former, on the west bank, is the more ancient and is the capital of the province, and the latter, on the east bank, does not date earlier than Dynasty VI. Of Ombos and Koptos, the former, on the west bank, has prehistoric cemeteries around it; while the latter, on the east bank, dates from Dynasty I. at the earliest. Hieraconpolis and Eileithyiapolis stand opposite to each other, and the former, which is on the west bank, is certainly the more ancient. Of Elephantine and Syene, the latter, on the east bank, is by far the less ancient. And in the case of Pselchis and Baki (Kubbân), the former, on the west bank, has near it an archaic fortress; while the latter, on the east bank, does not date earlier than Dynasty XII. The reason of this is to be found in the fact that most of the early cities were engaged in gold-mining, and despatched caravans into the Eastern Desert for that purpose. These cities were usually built on the western bank of the river, since the main routes of communication from end to end of Egypt passed along the western desert. Mining stations had, therefore, to be founded on the eastern bank opposite to the parent cities; and these stations soon became cities themselves as large as those on the western shore. Thus the antiquity of the eastern city in each of these cases indicates at least that same antiquity for the mining of gold.

Desert vegetation. The Coloquintida plant.

A near view of the Coloquintida plant. Photographed in the Wady Abâd.

Pl. ii.