WADY OWATAIB.
Published by Longman, Rees & Co. April 6th. 1835.
I have now only to advert to the singular situation of these ruins, their probable use, and the age when they were most probably erected. In a direct line, they are distant from the river six hours’ journey, which may be sixteen or eighteen miles. About a quarter of a mile from the ruin, I saw three or four blocks of stones, but no indication of their having formed part of an aqueduct, and there are no traces of wells; but both may have existed, and be now entirely buried by the sand of the desert. I could not, however, observe or hear of any decided traces of aqueducts between the ruin and the river. The occupants of the edifice may have been supplied with water by geerbahs, as the peasants of Metammah and other villages distant from the river are at this day.[21] If the edifice was only used as a residence during the season of the malaria, the rain water might have been preserved in cisterns and in the sacred lakes; but rain does not invariably fall here every year, and would afford, therefore, only a precarious supply. Those, however, who constructed such a building would certainly know how to sink a well, and, from the appearance of the ground, the trees, and the vicinity of the mountains, I do not conceive it would be a very laborious undertaking to find water.
Cailliaud considered this edifice to have been a college of priests; and Professor Heeren supposes it to be the celebrated Ammonium. I think neither of these suppositions probable. With regard to the first, we know that the priests were always surrounded with representations of the divinities and the mysterious language of hieroglyphics; but is it not remarkable that there is no structure either in Egypt or Ethiopia so destitute of the sacred writing as this? The priests, also, are supposed, with great probability, to have themselves executed the sculpture and hieroglyphics; and they cannot be imagined to have been unacquainted with that language. It must, on the contrary, have formed a principal branch of their education. I think it, therefore, very improbable that the place where they would be occupied in teaching hieroglyphics should, of all the ruins in the valley of the Nile, be the only one destitute of them; that where instruction was given in the mysteries of their religion, there should be so few representations of the gods, and those few almost of no use to the student, from being unexplained by hieroglyphics. One would imagine they would have gladly availed themselves of the opportunity of the unoccupied walls to exercise the skill of the students. If this were a college, their system of education must assuredly have been very defective, if they did not take care to have the mysteries they taught represented on the walls of the universities, and not on those of the temples only. We must consider the Ethiopians as ignorant indeed, if we suppose that they neglected to place them where they would have been really useful, while they covered with these subjects their temples, where they would be less observed, and the interior of the porticoes of their tombs, which were rarely opened. Had it been a college, some urchin would have shown his progress in the study by carving his name in hieroglyphics; and, considering that this was more the fashion with the ancients than the moderns, we should have as long a list of Ethiopian names here as we have of English at Eton or Harrow. In such a seminary, I conceive, the walls of the chambers, corridors, and temples, inside and outside, like the temples and palaces of Egypt, would have been decorated with sculpture. The walls are not rough, but smooth and finished; it has therefore not been the original intention to embellish them with such subjects.
Had this edifice, as Professor Heeren supposes, been the Ammonium, the original seat of the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, at whose command those religious colonies issued forth, which carried civilisation, arts, and religion from Ethiopia to the Delta; had this been the centre and stronghold of the superstitions of the Nile; the priests, the guardians of the sacred rituals, would not have omitted to decorate the abode of their great divinity with art and magnificence proportionate to the wealth and power of so great a nation. Well aware of the awe with which the appearance of mysterious learning inspires the vulgar, they would not have neglected to adorn the walls with imposing and mysterious subjects, to augment their veneration, to excite them to devotion, and to munificence in their offerings to the god. It accords in no degree with the religious pomp elsewhere displayed by the Ethiopians and Egyptians, to conceive that this unfinished and comparatively insignificant temple contained the golden altar, the “holiest of holies,” of their great divinity. That the great Ethiopian oracle, whose celebrity even Homer has testified, should not have had a more magnificent habitation than this, cannot be admitted. We know, from Pausanias and others, the costly presents which were made to the oracles of Greece; and can we conceive that the Ethiopians, probably equally, if not as more ancient, a much more religious and superstitious people, would have allowed their celebrated Ammonium to be the least finished, least magnificent and imposing, of all the temples which now exist in the valley of the Nile?
It is a more probable supposition that, as the wealth of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi exposed it from the beginning to the enterprises of avaricious and impious men, and was too powerful a temptation even to the Phocians, in the same manner the great oracle of Ammon in the valley of the Nile, particularly in a country like Ethiopia, where history tells us that gold was once so plentiful, might suffer from the celebrated altar which was dedicated to its worship being loaded with the valuable and magnificent devotional offerings of a wealthy and superstitious people. Such parade and splendour would serve as incentives to the enemies of their religion, equally anxious to appropriate the spoil and eradicate the superstitions of the worshippers of Ammon. But it is most probable that, at the time when the religion of the Gospel was widely spread in this part of Africa, some Christian king of Ethiopia, zealous, and desirous of obliging his subjects to embrace the true religion, and aware that, if his faith prevailed at all, it must prevail, to use the language of Paley, by the overthrow of every statue, altar, and temple in the world, may have utterly destroyed not only the Ammonium, but also many of the other temples; and this may account for the few remains of sacred edifices which are now found in Ethiopia. Another argument, in answer to the supposition of Professor Heeren, is, that, among the numerous representations of the divinities on the columns of the principal temples, there is not one single figure of Ammon, except with the attributes of Kneph.
This edifice may have been a château de chasse of the king, or a palace in which he passed the rainy season, which might then, as now, be unhealthy near the Nile. The objection to this supposition is, that the kings as well as the priests were generally, and probably always, surrounded with religious pomp and ceremony. I conceive it, therefore, a more reasonable conjecture that it was an hospital, to which invalids, particularly those suffering from malaria, were sent during the rainy season. This will account for the immense courts and chambers, and the insignificance of the temples, evidently intended for persons of little consideration. From the experience I have had of the climate of the desert, I must say I consider them much more healthy, in any season, than the valley of the Nile. At the instigation, I conceive, of some person acquainted with this fact, the Pasha established a splendid hospital and college at Abou Zabel, situated in the Desert, about twelve miles from Cairo. The dryness of the atmosphere, the sand immediately absorbing any rain that falls, renders these wildernesses in the highest degree salubrious. The stones of which this edifice is constructed are nearly the same size as those of the pyramids of Meroe; that is, about 1 foot high and 2½ feet long, and are apparently quarried from the neighbouring hills.
With regard to the antiquity of the ruins, it does not appear to me to be very great. The sculpture, which, in the absence of hieroglyphics, forms the only criterion, resembles, as already mentioned, that on the propylons at Uffidunia; not exactly indicating that they were built at the same period, but that they belonged equally to the last stage of sculpture in the two countries; and, as the arts first flourished in Ethiopia, they may have decayed there earlier than in Egypt, particularly as the wealth and power of this country diminished more rapidly, the Nile washing down to the lower valley the source of their affluence and prosperity. From the Grecian character of the fluting of the columns, as well as from the plan of the temple and sculpture, it is not improbable that this edifice was constructed about the period of Ergamenes, whose reign was coeval with that of Ptolemy II. Diodorus describes this king of Ethiopia as having had a Greek education, and having introduced into this his native country a taste for the philosophy of Greece, and delivered himself and his people from the tyranny of the priests; and perhaps, I may add, he endeavoured, by the introduction of foreign ornaments, to regenerate a taste for architecture and sculpture: but in this specimen we only see the last effort of a people whose greatness was passed away, their taste corrupted, and all the lights of knowledge and civilisation just expiring. The elegant pyramids of Meroe differ as widely, in taste and execution, from the immensely extensive but ill-planned ruins of Wady el Owataib, as the best sculpture at Thebes, during the age of Rameses II., differs from the corrupted style under the Ptolemies and Cæsars.