On the 6th of March we left Qeneh with fifteen camels, after two days’ stay. The first day we only rode three hours, as far as the charming well Bir Ambar, lying among the palms, which has been supplied by Ibrahim Pasha with a domed building, for the caravans. The second encampment at the station Leqêta, was soon reached on the following day. The old road to Kossêr from Koptos, the present Quft, the hills of which we saw to the right in the distance, leads first to the mountains El Qorn, (the horns). In their vicinity we first came down into the broad road-way of Kossêr, and reached Leqêta after a sixteen hours’ march, when the roads from Qeneh, Quft, (Koptos), Qûs (the ancient
, or Apollinopolis parva), and a fourth, leading directly from Luqsor, all unite. Five wells give tolerable water there; two half-formed buildings are destined for the reception of travellers.
Here I observed a trait of Arab hospitality which I must mention. At the parting meal in Qeneh, a fresh draught of the well-tasted Nile-water was handed me in a gilt goblet, elegantly ornamented with pious passages from the Koran. The simple yet pleasing form of the segment of a ball pleased me, and I told old Hussên so without expecting the answer: “The goblet is thine.” As I had nothing with me to give in return, I passed over the politeness, repeatedly declining the gift, and letting the cup remain without further remark. When I went to rest at night, I found it at my bedside, but gave express orders not to pack it up the next morning. We departed, and I did not open my travelling-bag until we reached Leqêta. How astonished was I, when my first glance again fell upon the carefully-packed goblet. Gabre Máriam had closed my luggage, and he confessed, on my angry question as to how the cup had come there against my order, that he had placed it there at the particular desire of old Seid Hussên. Now I was finally beaten, and had to think of some gift for my return.
We set out the same night from Leqêta, and rode three hours forward to an old, now little used, and waterless station at the Gebel Maáuad. Our Arabs of the Ag’aïze tribe, are not so animated as the Abâbde or Bisharūn, and their camels are worse.
Beyond Gebel Maáuad, we entered the hilly sand-plain Qsûr el Benat, and then again behind another pass, the plain Reshrashi. At the end of them to the left, rises the Gebel Abu Gûeh, on which we turned our backs, and passed round the corner of a rock, on the sandstone walls of which I found the cartouches of the sun-worshipper Amenophis IV. and his queen, with the shining sun[103] sculptured over them. Their names were partly erased as everywhere else, although the king had not then assumed the name of Bech-en-aten. Toward noon we entered the mountain, and in three quarters of an hour we arrived at the well Hamamât.
Here there seems to have been an ancient Koptic colony, and the broad wall built down to the depth of nearly eighty feet, in which a winding stair leads to the bottom, is still ascribed by the Arabs to the Nazâra, the Christians. The ancient quarries, our next goal, were distant about half an hour from the well.
In a spacious grotto, covered with Greek and Roman inscriptions, I established my principal quarters; as a cursory view amply demonstrated that we had several days’ work before us. The ancient Egyptians, who were great admirers and excellent connoisseurs of the different sorts of stone, had here found a layer of precious green breccia, and beside that, fine dark-coloured veins of granite, which had already been exhausted under the sixth dynasty in the beginning of the thirtieth century B.C. Since that time, numerous inscriptions have been found on the surrounding rocks. Among these some of the Persian rule are particularly worthy of note. The hieroglyphical cartouches of Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes, are almost solely known from hence, and a royal high architect of the dynasty of the Psammetici has given his family-tree in no less than twenty-three generations, who, without a single exception, all occupied the same important post, and partly in connection with considerable sacerdotal offices. At the top of the long list is an ancestress, who must have lived seven hundred years before the last link of the chain. A great number of Greek proscynemata also lead us to the conclusion that the quarries were used even in the Greek and Roman time. We were engaged for five days from an early hour till late in the evening in these impressions and copies, to the great astonishment of the small caravans that passed almost every day, as the great pilgrim-road from Upper Egypt, and a great part of the Sudan leads through this valley to Kossêr and Mekka.
My purpose had originally been to have gone from Qeneh to Kossêr, and thence embark for Tôr. But as the passage takes a long time, I was very glad to learn at Qeneh, that there is also a way from Hamamât through the midst of the mountains to Gebel Zeït, opposite Tôr. I therefore determined to pursue this difficult, but more interesting and shorter way. At the same time I sent a courier on to Kossêr, to send a ship immediately to Gebel Zeït, to wait our arrival.
In Hamamât I had still to stand a heavy row with the Arabs, who had suddenly taken a decided dislike to the little-known and almost waterless route, and who would rather have conducted us along the shore by way of Kossêr. But as it was important for me to visit certain ancient quarries in the depth of the mountains, I threatened to write to the Pasha if they did not keep their word, and made them answerable for all mischances. In this way I brought my plan to bear, after much hesitation. But it was nearly wrecked; for by the negligence of our cook, who had left vinegar standing in copper pots, we were almost poisoned the evening before our departure. However after a wretched night, we got over it, and went off from Hamamât on the 13th of March.