This small castle, but still respectable for the neighbourhood, reminds one, by its niches and arched doors, of the Christian architecture of former centuries, but it does not appear to have been destined for any religious purpose. Perhaps in its prime it belonged to the powerful and warlike tribes of the Shaiqîeh, which, according to tradition, immigrated from Arabia into this neighbourhood some centuries ago. At the time of the Egyptian conquest the country was under the dominion of three Shaiqîeh princes; probably one of them resided here. The surrounding country was also more favoured by nature, the shore flatter, beset with bushes, here and there bordered by a fertile piece of land.
After I had sketched the plan of the building, we set off at nine o’clock in the evening, by the light of a full moon, on our way back, which we shortened considerably by taking the road from the island of Saffi through the desert, where we passed the night, on an open sand plain, in the great granite field. About five o’clock, between moonshine and morning dawn, we were again on our way, and by nine o’clock we had reached our ship at Kasinqar.
Near this place I met with a tree quite new to me, in a little Wadi, which led to the river. It was called Bân, and does not grow anywhere but in this Wadi, which is called Chôr el Bân from it, and in another, near Méraui.[89] A strong white-barked stem, not unlike that of our walnut-tree, with some more stems round it, and short white branches, grew short and knotty out of the ground. The branches were now almost naked, a few only had leaves, if we can call the great bunches of switches by that name. The fruit is a long, round fluted ball, which splits into three pieces, when the five to ten black-shelled nuts (of about the size of a hazel-nut) which it contains, are ripe; the white sweet, though rather sharp, oily kernel is not unpleasant; but it is mostly used by the inhabitants to press oil from. The bloom of the tree is yellow, and grows in bunches.
At noon the Sheikh of Nuri came to our boat, from whom I obtained some more information as to the cataract country. There are in the province of Shaiqîeh and the adjoining one of Monassir eight especial cataracts: the first, Shelâl Gerêndid, near the island Ishishi; Shelâl Terâi, near Kû’eh; Shelâl Mérui; Shelâl Dabák, near the island Uli; Shelâl el Edermîeh, e’Kabenât, e Tanarâi, and Om Derás. From hence a rocky district stretches to El Kâb, whence the stream flows to Shelâl Mogrât, in the great reach to Berber.
There is nothing now spoken in this whole neighbourhood but Arabic; but there is still a recollection of the former Nubian population, as there are yet a number of villages distinguished from the others as Nuba villages. Above the province Dongola, the following were pointed out to me as such:—Gebel Maqál and Zûma on the right shore, and near the island Massaui, which also bears the Nubian name of Abranârti; then on the left hand Belled e’ Nûba, between Debbe and Abu Dôm, Haluf or Nuri, and Bellel, opposite Gerf e’ Sheikh and Kasinqar. Then the account springs over to Chôsh e’ Gurûf, a little below the island of Mogrât, and towards Salame and Darmali, two villages between Mechêref and Dârmer; and finally, there is a Belled e’ Nûba, north of Gôs Burri, in the province Metamme.
At last, on the 4th of June, we quitted Barkal, after we had loaded the Ram and the other heavy monuments in two transport vessels.
We remained the first night in Abu Dôm on the left shore. I had heard of a Fakir, belonging to this place, who was said to possess manuscript notes on the tribe of Shaiqîeh Arabs. He was an intelligent, and for this country, a learned man, and I found him quite ready, not to give me the original of the few sheets he possessed, but to set to work immediately and copy them for me.
The next morning we landed first in Tanqássi, about the distance of an hour and a half from Abu Dôm, where we were to find ruins. The Fakir Daha, who belonged to the Korêsh, the tribe of the Prophet, accompanied us to the now inconsiderable mounds of bricks. We passed by his hereditary tomb, a little cupola building erected by his grandfather, which already had not only received him, but also his father and several other relations. From hence I espied some hills in the distance, which the Fakir declared to be natural. Nevertheless we rode up to them, and found, at about half an hour’s distance from the river, more than twenty tolerably large pyramids, now apparently formed of nothing but black mud, but originally built of Nile bricks. Single stones lay round about, and on the east side, at some distance, there were always two little heaps of stones, which appeared to have belonged to a kind of ante-chamber, and perhaps were connected with the pyramid by brick walls. Nowhere, however, were there any hewn stones or inscriptions to be found. On the opposite shore, near Kurru, we also found a field of pyramids, but very few ruins of towns were to be discovered. The largest of the two most considerable pyramids, named Quntûr, was about thirty-five feet high, and towards the south-east were the remains of an antechamber. Around these two were grouped twenty-one smaller ones, of which four, like the largest pyramid, were built entirely of sandstone, but are now mostly in ruins; others consisted only of black basalt. Finally, westward of all the ground plan of a large apparently quite massive and consequently completely ruined pyramid was to be seen, whose foundation was in the rock. It appears also that this pyramid, which by its solid architecture was distinguished from all the surrounding ones, belonged to a royal dynasty of Napata; thus it was easier to account for the want of city ruins here than on the opposite side.
Three quarters of an hour down the stream on the right, lies the little village of Zûma. Near it, towards the mountains, rises an old fortress, with towers of defence, called Kárat Négil, the outer walls of which were ruined and destroyed about fifty or sixty years ago, when the present inhabitants of Zûma settled here. The name is derived from that of an old king of the country, called Négil, in whose time the surrounding land, which is now barren, was still reached and fertilized by the Nile.
The first discovery on the road to the fortress was another number of pyramids, of which eight were yet about twenty feet high; including the ruined ones, which seemed to have been as usual the most massive, there were altogether thirty; to the south-west the old quarries are yet to be seen, which had furnished the materials for the pyramids.