We here forsook the northerly direction, which the wells after Gebel Nusf had obliged us to take, and went westerly by the Gilif mountains, in Wadi el Mehêt, crossed the dry Chôr el Ammer, whence the way to Ambukôl branches off, and encamped at night after ten o’clock in the Wadi el Uêr, called by others the Wadi Abu Harôd. From this place the Gilif mountains retreated eastward again for some time, and only left sand-hills in the foreground, by which we travelled on the following morning. To the W.N.W. we saw another chain, no longer called Gilif; a single projecting double-pointed mountain was called Miglik. The great creek of the Gilif chain, filled with sand-rock, is two hours’ journey broad; then the way leads northward into these mountains, which is called Gebêl el Mágeqa after the well of Mágeqa.
Before the entrance into these mountains we came to a place covered with heaps of stones, which might be taken for grave tumuli, but under which no one lies buried. When the date-merchants, whom we encountered on the following day with their large round wicker-baskets, come this way, they are here asked for money by their camel-driver. Whoever will not give them anything has such a cenotaph raised from its stones, as a memorial of his hardheartedness. We also found a similar place in the desert of Korusko. After nine o’clock we got to the well; we did not however stop, but ascended a wild valley to a considerable height, where we encamped towards noon.
The whole road was well-wooded, and thus offered a pleasant variety. The sont or gum trees were scarce here; the somra was the most frequent, which always spreads out into several strong branches on the ground, and ends in an even crown of thin twigs and little green leaves, so that it often resembles a regularly formed cone overturned, frequently attaining a height of fifteen feet. By it grows the heglik, with branches all round the trunk, and single groups of leaves and twigs like the pear-tree. The unprickly serha, on the contrary, has all its branches surrounded with very small green leaflets like moss, and the tondûb has no leaves at all, but instead of them little green branchlets, growing irregularly, almost as thick as foliage, while the sálame-bush consists of long slender switches, which are beset with green leaflets and long green thorns.
After four o’clock we set out, and came down very gradually from the heights. In the Wadi Kalas there are again a number of wells, twenty-five feet deep, with very good rain-water. Here we encamped for the night, although we had only arrived there shortly after sunset. The animals were watered and the skins filled. The whole plateau is rich in trees and bushes, and is inhabited by men and animals.
Our road on the following day retained the same character, as long as we journeyed between the beautiful and wildly rising walls of porphyry. After two hours we arrived at two other springs also called Kalas, with little but good water. Hence a road leads north-eastward to the well Meroë in the Wadi Abu Dôm, probably so denominated from a white rock.
Three hours farther, passing by Gebel Abrak, we entered the great Wadi Abu Dôm, which we pursued in a W.N.W. direction. This remarkable valley runs from the Nile by Mechêref along an extended mountain chain to the village of Abu Dôm, which is situated opposite Mount Barkal, in a slanting direction. If it be considered that the upper north-east mouth of this valley, crossing the whole peninsula and its mountains, is almost opposite the confluence of the Atbara, which runs into the Nile in the same direction above Mechêref, the idea may be entertained that at one time, though not in historical times, there was here a water communication which cut off the greater part of the eastern reach of the Nile, which now exists through the circumstance that the rocky plateau near Abu Hammed turns the stream southernward for a degree and a half against its general direction. The name of the valley is taken from the single dôm palms that are found scattered up and down in it. The mountain chain running north of the valley is distinctly different from the mountains which we had formerly passed. With our entrance into this valley, we lost the hard mountain soil, and the flying sand again predominated, without, however, overcoming the still not scarce vegetation.
After we had passed a side valley, Om Shebah, containing well-water, in the afternoon, on the left, we encamped at about nine o’clock for the night. Next morning we came to the deep well, Hanik. I stopped about noon at a second, called Om Sarale, after the tree of the same name.
Here I left the caravan with Jussuf, to reach Barkal by a circuit to Nuri, lying somewhat higher up the river on this shore. After an hour and a half, we came to the very considerable ruins of a great Christian convent in Wadi Gazâl; so named from the gazelles, who scrape here in the Chor (valley-bed), for water in great numbers. The church was built of white unhewn sand-stone up to the windows, and, above them, of unburnt brick; the walls covered with a strong coating of gypsum, and painted inside. The vaulted apse of the tri-naved basilica, lies as usual to the eastward, the entrance behind the western transept to the north and south; all the arches of the doors, windows, and pillar niches are round. Koptic, more or less ornamented, crosses are frequently placed over the door, the simplest form of which, ✠ is easily comparable to the ancient Egyptian symbol of life. The whole is a true type of all the Koptic churches which I have seen, and I therefore add the little ground-plan, which Erbkam took of it.
The building is about eighty feet long, and exactly half as broad. The north wall is ruined. The church is surrounded by a great court, the outer walls of which, as also the numerous partly vaulted convent cells, still well preserved, are built of rude blocks. Before the western entrance of the church, separated only by a little court, lies the largest building, forty-six feet in length, probably the house of the prior, from which a particular side entrance led into the church. On the south side of the convent are two church-yards; the western one, about forty paces from the church, contained a number of graves, which were simply erected of black stones collected together. Nearer to the buildings was the eastern one, which was remarkable for a considerable number of grave-stones, partly inscribed in Greek and partly in Koptic, which will cause me to make a second visit to this remarkable convent before our departure from Barkal. I counted more than twenty inscribed stones, of which some had of course suffered extremely, and as many slabs of baked earth, with inscriptions scratched upon them, almost all, however, broken to pieces. They contain the most southern Greek inscriptions which have yet been discovered in the Nile regions, with the exception of the inscription of Adulis and Axum in Abyssinia; and though it be not doubtful that the Greek language after the promulgation of Christianity, the traces of which we can detect in architectural remains farther than Soba, was used and understood by the natives in all the flourishing countries up to Abyssinia, at least for religious purposes; yet these epitaphs, (among which, on a cursory examination, I could find none in the Ethiopian,) seemed to point to immigrating Græco-Koptic inhabitants of the old convent.