Unfortunately, I received, soon after our return to Cairo, such very questionable news of Frey’s health, that Abeken and Bonomi have determined to go to the camp and bring him, in a litter they took with them, from the Labyrinth to Zani, on the Nile, and thence by water hither. As soon as Dr. Pruner had seen him, he declared that the only advisable course was to let him depart immediately for Europe. Disease of the liver, in the way it developed itself in him, is incurable in Egypt. So he left us yesterday at noon. May the climate of his native land soon restore the powers of a friend, equally talented as estimable, in whom we all lose much.
A few days ago I purchased from a Basque named Domingo Lorda, who has stayed a long time in Abyssinia, and has since accompanied d’Abadie in several journeys, some Ethiopic Manuscripts for the Berlin Museum. He bought them, probably at an inconsiderable price, in a convent on the island of Thâna, near Gorata, a day’s journey from the sources of the Blue Nile, where the inhabitants had been put to fearful distress by the locusts. One contains the history of Abyssinia from Solomon to Christ, is reported to come from Axum, and to be 500 or 600 years old! This first portion of Abyssinian history, named Kebre Negesty, “The Fame of the Kings,” is said to be far rarer than the second, Tarik Negest, “The History of the Kings;” but this manuscript contains at the end a list of the Ethiopian kings since Christ. The largest manuscript, with many pictures ornamented in the Byzantine style, and, according to what Lieder tells me, almost unique in its kind, contains mostly lives of Saints. In the third, the yet valid Canones of the church are completely preserved. I hope the purchase will be welcome to our library.[38]
Now, too, are our purchases for the voyage ended; a comfortable bark is hired, and will save us the great difficulties of a land journey, which is scarcely possible during the coming season of inundation.
LETTER XIV.
Thebes.
October 13, 1843.
On the 16th of August, I went from Cairo to the Faiûm, where our camp was broken up on the 21st. Two days later we sailed from Benisuef, sent the camels back to Cairo, and only took the donkeys with us, as it was found, upon careful consideration, that the originally-intended land journey by the foot of the mountains, far away from the river, was altogether impossible during the season of the inundation, and, on the eastern side, it was not only too difficult, but perfectly useless for us, by reason of the proximity of the desert, towards which there is nothing more to be found for our purposes. We have therefore made excursions from our bark, on foot, and with donkeys, principally to the east and some attainable mountains, though we have also visited the most important spots on the western shore.
Even on the day of our departure from Benisuef, we found, in the neighbourhood of the village of Surarîeh, a small rock temple, not mentioned by former travellers, indeed, not even by Wilkinson, which was dedicated already in the nineteenth dynasty of Menephthes, the son of Ramses Miamun,[39] to Hathor, the Egyptian Venus.[40] Farther on, lie several groups of graves, which have scarcely received any attention, although they are of peculiar interest by reason of their great antiquity. The whole of middle Egypt, to judge from the tombs preserved, flourished during the Old Empire, before the irruption of the Hyksos, not only under the twelfth dynasty,[41] to which period the famous tombs of Benihassan suit, and Bersheh belong, but even under the sixth dynasty[42] we have found extensive series of tombs, belonging to these early times, and attached to cities, of which the later Egyptian geography does not even know the names, as they were probably already destroyed by the Hyksos. In Benihassan we stayed the longest time—sixteen days; through this, the season is far advanced, and it must not be lost in our journey southward. At the next places, therefore, only notes were taken, and the most important forms in paper, so also at El Amarna, Siut, at the reverend Abydos, and in the younger, but not less magnificent, almost intactly preserved, temple of Dendera. At Siut, we visited the governor of Upper Egypt, Selim Pasha, who is working an ancient alabaster quarry between Bersheh and Gauâta, discovered by the Bedouins some months ago.
The town of Siut is well built and charmingly situated, particularly if it be looked upon from the steep rocks of the western shore. The prospect of the inundated Nile valley from these heights is the most beautiful that we have yet seen, and is very peculiar in these times of inundation in which we travel. From the foot of the abrupt rock, a small dyke, overgrown with vines, and a bridge leads to the town, which lies like an island in the boundless ocean of inundation. The gardens, of Ibrahim Pasha, to the left, form another island, green and fresh with trees and bushes. The city, with its fifteen minarets, rises high upon the ruined mounds of ancient Lycopolis; from it a great embankment reaches to the Nile; toward the south may be seen other long dykes stretching through the waters like threads; on the other side, the Arabian mountains come on closely, by which the valley is bounded, and formed into an easily-overlooked picture.
Since the 6th of October we have been in Royal Thebes. Our bark touched the shore first beneath the wall of Luqsor, at the southerly point of the Thebaïc ruins. The strong current of the river has thrust itself so near to the old temple, that it is in great danger. I endeavoured to obtain a general view of the ruins of Thebes from the heights of the temple, in order to compare it with the picture I had idealised to myself, from plans and descriptions.
But the distances are too great to give a complete view. One looks into a wide landscape, in which the temple groups are distinguishable only to those who are acquainted with the neighbourhood. To the north, at a short hour’s distance stand the mighty pylones of Karnak, forming a temple city in itself, gigantic and astounding in all its proportions. We spent the next days in a cursory examination of it. Across the river, at the foot of the Libyan mountains, lie the Memnonia, once an unbroken series of palaces, which probably found their equal nowhere in antiquity. Even now, the temples of Medînet Hâbu, at the southern end of this row, show themselves, with their high rubbish-mounds at a distance, and at the northern end, an hour away down the river, is the well-preserved temple of Qurnah; between both lies the temple of Ramses Miamun,[43] (Sesostris), already most celebrated by the description of Diodorus. Thus the four Arab villages, Karnak and Luqsor on the east, Qurnah and Medînet Hâbu on the west of the river, form a great quadrangle, each side of which measures about half a geographical mile, and gives us some idea of the dimensions of the most magnificent part of ancient Thebes. How far the remainder of the inhabited portion of the hundred-gated city extended beyond these limits to the east, north, and south, is difficult to be discovered now, because everything that did not remain upright in the lapse of ages gradually disappeared under the annually rising soil of the valley, induced by the alluvial deposit.