The 18th, we left Esné, and passed the town of Edfu, where there is likewise considerable remains of Egyptian architecture. It is the Appollinis Civitas Magna.
The wind failing, we were obliged to stop in a very poor, desolate, and dangerous part of the Nile, called Jibbel el Silselly, where a boom, or chain, was drawn across the river, to hinder, as is supposed, the Nubian boats from committing piratical practices in Egypt lower down the stream. The stones on both sides, to which the chain was fixed, are very visible; but I imagine that it was for fiscal rather than for warlike purposes, for Syene being garrisoned, there is no possibility of boats passing from Nubia by that city into Egypt. There is indeed another purpose to which it might be designed; to prevent war upon the Nile between any two states.
We know from Juvenal[133], who lived some time at Syene, that there was a tribe in that neighbourhood called Ombi, who had violent contentions with the people of Dendera about the crocodile; it is remarkable these two parties were Anthropophagi so late as Juvenal’s time, yet no historian speaks of this extraordinary fact, which cannot be called in question, as he was an eye-witness and resided at Syene.
Now these two nations who were at war had above a hundred miles of neutral territory between them, and therefore they could never meet except on the Nile. But either one or the other possessing this chain, could hinder his adversary from coming nearer him. As the chain is in the hermonthic nome, as well as the capital of the Ombi, I suppose this chain to be the barrier of this last state, to hinder those of Dendera from coming up the river to eat them.
About noon we passed Coom Ombo, a round building like a castle, where is supposed to have been the metropolis of Ombi, the people last spoken of. We then arrived at Daroo[134], a miserable mansion, unconscious that, some years after, we were to be indebted to that paltry village for the man who was to guide us through the desert, and restore us to our native country and our friends.
We next came to Shekh Ammer, the encampment of the Arabs [135]Ababdé, I suppose the same that Mr Norden calls Ababuda, who reach from near Cosseir far into the desert. As I had been acquainted with one of them at Badjoura, who desired medicines for his father, I promised to call upon him, and see their effect, when I should pass Shekh Ammer, which I now accordingly did; and by the reception I met with, I found they did not expect I would ever have been as good as my word. Indeed they would probably have been in the right, but as I was about to engage myself in extensive deserts, and this was a very considerable nation in these tracts, I thought it was worth my while to put myself under their protection.
Shekh Ammer is not one, but a collection of villages, composed of miserable huts, containing, at this time, about a thousand effective men: they possess few horse, and are mostly mounted on camels. These were friends to Shekh Hamam, governor of Upper Egypt for the time, and consequently to the Turkish government at Syene, as also to the janissaries there at Deir and Ibrim. They were the barrier, or bulwark, against the prodigious number of Arabs, the Bishareen[136], and others, depending upon the kingdom of Sennaar.
Ibrahim, the son, who had seen me at Furshout and Badjoura, knew me as soon as I arrived, and, after acquainting his father, came with about a dozen of naked attendants, with lances in their hands to escort me. I was scarce got into the door of the tent, before a great dinner was brought after their custom; and, that being dispatched, it was a thousand times repeated, how little they expected that I would have thought or inquired about them.
We were introduced to their Shekh, who was sick, in a corner of a hut, where he lay upon a carpet, with a cushion under his head. This chief of the Ababdé, called Nimmer, i. e. the Tiger (though his furious qualities were at this time in great measure allayed by sickness) asked me much about the state of Lower Egypt. I satisfied him as far as possible, but recommended to him to confine his thoughts nearer home, and not to be over anxious about these distant countries, as he himself seemed, at that time, to be in a declining state of health.
Nimmer was a man about sixty years of age, exceedingly tormented with the gravel, which was more extraordinary as he dwelt near the Nile; for it is, universally, the disease with those who use water from draw-wells, as in the desert. But he told me, that, for the first twenty-seven years of his life, he never had seen the Nile, unless upon some plundering party; that he had been constantly at war with the people of the cultivated part of Egypt, and reduced them often to the state of starving; but now that he was old, a friend to Shekh Hamam, and was resident near the Nile, he drank of its water, and was little better, for he was already a martyr to the disease. I had sent him soap pills from Badjoura, which had done him a great deal of good, and now gave him lime-water, and promised him, on my return, to shew his people how to make it.