On the 30th of August we reached Debôt, and the following day Philae, where we immediately took possession of the charming temple terrace, which, since that time, has been our head-quarters, and will be so for some time yet. The great buildings of the temple, although its earliest erection only dates as far back as Nectanebus, offer an unusually rich harvest of hieroglyphical, demotic, and Greek inscriptions, and to my astonishment I have discovered a chamber in one of the pylones, which contains only Ethiopian sculptures and inscriptions.
LETTER XXVIII.
Thebes, Qurna.
November 24, 1844.
We arrived here, at the last great station of our journey, on the 4th of November, and feel much nearer to our native land. During our stay here, which is certain to run over several months, we have established ourselves in a charming rock fort, on a hill of Abd el Qurna; it is an ancient tomb, enlarged by erections of brick, whence the whole Thebaîc plain can be overlooked at one view. I should be afraid of being almost annihilated by the immense treasure of monuments, if the mighty character of the remains of this most royal city of all antiquity did not excite and retain the imagination at the highest point. While the examination of the previous numerous temples of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods had almost become, as it were, wearisome, I feel as fresh here, where the Homeric form of the mighty Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties come forth to us in all their majesty and pride, as at the beginning of my journey.
I have at once had excavations made in the celebrated temple of Ramses Miamun, situated at our feet, which have led to unexpected results. Erbkam had conducted the works with the greatest care, and his now finished ground-plan of this most beautiful building of the Pharaonic times, the tomb of Osymandyas, according to Diodorus, is the first which can be called complete, as it does not depend on arbitrary restorations, carried too far by the French, and not far enough by Wilkinson.
In the filled-up rock tomb of the same Ramses, at Babel Meluk, erroneously considered incomplete by Rosellini, I have also had excavations made. Several chambers have already been found, and if fortune favours us, we shall also find the sarcophagus, though not unopened, (that the Persians have taken care of,) yet possibly less destroyed than others, as the deposit of soil on the tomb is very ancient.
During our journey thither from Korusko, I have been engaged upon the little known languages of the southern countries, beside my antiquarian pursuits. Among these three are the most extended: the Nuba language of the Nuba or Berber nation; the Kung’âra language of the negroes of Dar Fur; and the Beg’a language of the Bisharîba, inhabiting the eastern part of the Sudan. Of all three I have so perfectly formed the grammar and vocabulary, that their publication, at some period, will offer a complete view of these languages. The most important of them is the last named, because it proves itself a rich language in a grammatical point of view, and a very remarkable branch of the Caucasian family by its position in development. It is spoken by that nation which I believe I can prove to be the once flourishing one of Meroë, and which therefore has the most definite right to be called the Ethiopian people in the most strict sense of the term.
It has also been seen that there was nothing to be found of a primitive Ethiopian civilisation, or even of an ancient Ethiopian national culture, of which the new school of learning pretends to know so much; in fact, that we have every reason to deny its existence. Those accounts of the ancients which do not rest on totally erroneous information, only refer to the civilisation and arts of Egypt, which had fled to Ethiopia during the time of the supremacy of the Hyksos. The return of Egyptian might from Ethiopia, on the founding of the New Empire of the Egyptians, and its advance even into the depths of Asia, was transferred to the Asiatic traditions, and afterwards to the Greek, from the country of Ethiopia to the nation of Ethiopians; for no rumour of an older Egyptian empire, and its former peaceful prince had penetrated to the northern nations. I have transmitted a report to the Academy on the result of our Ethiopian journey, and I have given in it a sketch of Ethiopian history since the first conquest of the country by Sesurtesen III., in the twelfth dynasty of Manetho, till the prince of the Meroitic kingdom in the first centuries of our era, and then through the middle ages to the Bisharîba of the present day, whose sheikhs we saw, in chains, pass by the ruins of their former metropolis, and the pyramids of their ancient kings.
LETTER XXIX.
Thebes, Qurna.
January 8, 1845.