The filtering jars and the drinking bottles come from Keneh, or rather the most of them do, and the large jars come from Balias, a town a few miles above. They are made of a peculiar clay which is mixed with the ashes of halfa grass and turned on an ordinary potter’s wheel. They are dried in the sun, and when complete require a little soaking to remove the taste of the earth. They are very porous, water passes easily through them, and when placed in the open air the transformation and constant evaporation that follows keep the contents very cool.
We met many rafts of these ballasee on their way down the river, and some large ones were tied to the bank at Keneh. The men in charge of the rafts are obliged to remove the water from the half immersed jars every few hours to prevent their absorption of enough to sink them. The same kind of drinking bottle can be found in Spain and in Mexico, and also in some of the South American countries. They are used all through Egypt, and their manufacture employs a considerable number of persons. The man who introduces them in the Mississippi valley will confer a boon upon the inhabitants of that region.
An hour’s ride from the river on the side opposite Keneh is the temple of Denderah.
Compared with the other temples of Egypt, this one is modern as it was built less than two thousand years ago, at the time the Romans held possession of the country. Egyptian sculpture had long been on the decline and the figures are far less graceful than those of a much older period, but the architecture retained its grandeur, and one cannot admire too much the magnificent proportions of the halls and columns of Denderah, especially in the grand portico and in some of the inner apartments.
The temple is the best preserved that has yet been discovered; its walls and columns are all in place and the roof is almost entire, so that it presents the best specimen of a complete temple. It contains a zodiac which was the subject of much controversy on account of its supposed antiquity, but a careful reading of some of the surrounding inscriptions has exploded the theory that the ancient Egyptians were the authors of the zodiac.
On the side wall of the temple is a portrait of Cleopatra, which is interesting for the reason that it is cotemporaneous with the existence of that estimable but warm blooded lady, whose habits were not such as to make her a model for the guidance of young women of the present day. We looked at the portrait for the beauty for which she was renowned but could not find it though we all admitted that her face was not unhandsome. Her figure does not possess the grace of her Greek portraits, and altogether the picture was a disappointment.
On several places on the walls of the temple there are sculptures representing the asp, the serpent which was once worshipped as a divinity. Asp-headed gods were frequent among the Egyptian sculptures, and their worship extended over a long period. And it was by one of these serpents that Cleopatra, of whom we have just been speaking, was stung to death. The event is recorded in a pathetic poem which begins thus:
“She took a nasty, pison snake,
And hid it in her gown,
It gave its little tail a shake