The present melek has a small plantation of vines and pomegranates, which flourish luxuriantly in this country. He procured the plants a few years ago from Egypt; and seems to be prouder of his little garden than of any thing else he possesses. We had a supper in the same style as the dinner; and our beds were the angoureebs on which we had been sitting all the day, with a carpet for a mattress, and no other covering than our cloaks.
Island of Argo.—April 18. The melek, perceiving my impatience to visit the antiquities, provided my artist and myself with excellent horses, while my dragoman, and our guide, his nephew, accompanied us on dromedaries. We rode through the centre of the island, which is entirely uncultivated, but planted with acacias, like a shrubbery. The soil is capable of cultivation; and only a more extensive knowledge of hydraulics appears required to enable the people to irrigate and cultivate the whole of the island.
We set out at five o’clock, and, after two hours’ ride (about ten miles), reached the site of a small town or village, with merely a few bricks remaining. An hour afterwards we arrived at a similar place, and in ten minutes more at a third. Twenty minutes from the latter, being three hours and a half from the time that we started, we arrived at the antiquities which were the object of our excursion. The distance, from the rate we travelled, may be about eighteen miles.
Pl. 34.
| On stone by W. Walton, from a Drawing by G. A. Hoskins Esqr. | Printed by C. Hullmandel. |
COLOSSAL STATUE IN THE ISLAND OF ARGO.
Published by Longman, Rees & Co. April 6th. 1835.
The antiquities amply repaid us for the trouble of visiting them. They consist chiefly of two colossal statues of grey granite, now lying on the ground. The faces are Egyptian, but the sculpture is Ethiopian; not in a very good style, the forms being extremely bulky and clumsy. The length, including the pedestal, which is 2 feet 10 inches, is 23 feet. One statue has lost part of its arms; the other is broken into two pieces, but the features are less injured. They have never been quite finished; which is, doubtless the reason that neither is ornamented with hieroglyphics. The figures are placed in the usual standing position of Egyptian statues, one foot advanced before the other. The one that is broken has on the left foot a small statue. (See my picturesque views and architectural restoration, Plates [XXXIII.,] [XXXIV.,] and [XXXV.]) The ornaments around their necks and ankles are curious, and quite Ethiopian. The wreath around the head-dress of one of them is that of a conqueror; which I conceive to afford a strong ground for conjecturing that these statues were erected in commemoration of the conquest of Egypt: but I am led to this conclusion principally from the circumstance of the only name in hieroglyphics now remaining here being that of Sabaco, the first king of the Ethiopian dynasty who conquered and reigned over Egypt.
The circumstance of the statues not being finished, may be accounted for by the brief duration, at that period, of the Ethiopian dominion over this part of the country. The statues erected to celebrate the triumph of their arms in Egypt would naturally be thrown down by the Egyptian invaders. Psammitichus, the first king of the 26th dynasty, who reigned immediately after the Ethiopians, and whose territory, we know, from the Greek inscription at Abou Simbel, certainly extended as far as the second cataract, might have conquered this part of Ethiopia, and thrown down the statues of a king naturally so hateful to the Egyptians. They seem, like the two celebrated statues at Thebes, to have ornamented the entrance of a temple, for behind them is a considerable space covered with sandstone, all in small pieces, but evidently the ruins of a large temple.