[CONTENTS.]
[APPENDIX.]
[INDEX]

On Stone by W. L. Walton. Printed by Hullmandel & Walton.

MOUNT BARKAL. (NUBIA)

London. Richard Bentley New Burlington Street, 1852.

DISCOVERIES
IN
EGYPT, ETHIOPIA,
AND THE
PENINSULA OF SINAI,

I N T H E Y E A R S 1842-1845,
DURING THE MISSION
SENT OUT BY
HIS MAJESTY FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. OF PRUSSIA.
By DR. RICHARD LEPSIUS.
EDITED, WITH NOTES, BY
KENNETH R. H. MACKENZIE.

MEROE.
SECOND EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1853.

TO
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT,
WITH
THE DEEPEST RESPECT AND GRATITUDE.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE.

The purpose of the Scientific Expedition, sent out in 1842 by his Majesty the King, was an historical and antiquarian research into, and collection of the ancient Egyptian monuments, in the valley of the Nile, and the peninsula of Sinai. It was by royal munificence provided with the means for remaining three years; it rejoiced in the favour and interest of the highest person in the realm, as well as in the most active and kindly assistance of Alexander Von Humboldt; and under such a rare combination of fortunate circumstances, it completed its intended task as fully as could have been hoped. A “Prefatory account of the expedition, its results, and their publication,” (Berlin, 1849, 4to.) was published with the first parts of the great monumental work, which is brought out at the command of his Majesty, in a manner corresponding to the importance of the treasures brought back, and contains a short abstract of the more important results of the Expedition. The work, there announced, “The Monuments of Egypt and Ethiopia,” will contain more than 800 plates, of the largest size, of which half are already prepared, and 240 plates already published, will lay before the public these results, as far as concerns the sculptures, the topography, and architecture, while the accompanying text will explain them more fully.

It however, appeared necessary (without taking the purely scientific labours into account), to lay before a larger circle of readers a picture of the external events of the expedition, of the relative operations of its members, of the obstacles, and the favourable circumstances of the journey, the condition of the countries through which it passed, and their effect upon the actual design of the undertaking; finally to offer a few observations on the remarkable monuments of that most historical of all countries, as must continually recur to the well prepared traveller, and which might rouse others who have already perceived the importance of the newly founded science, to a more active interest. If, besides, it be of the greatest utility for a just understanding of these scientific labours which are gradually coming to the light, and which have been caused by the journey; that the circumstances under which the materials for them were collected, I think that the publication of the following letters requires no farther excuse, as they make no pretension to any particular literary perfection, or descriptive power, or, on the other hand, to be a strictly scientific work.

The letters are almost in the original form as they were written, sometimes as a report direct to his Majesty the King, sometimes to his Excellency, the then Minister of Instruction, Eichhorn, or to other high patrons and honoured men, as A. Von Humboldt, Bunsen, Von Olfers, Ehrenberg, and sometimes to my father, who followed my progress with the most lively interest. Several of them were immediately printed in the papers on their arrival in Europe, particularly in the Preussische Staatszeitung, and thence in other papers. The unessential changes mostly relate to the editing. All the additions or enlargements have been added as notes; and among these belong particularly the arguments and grounds as to the true position of Sinai, which, since then has been proved in various quarters, and again disproved, and again concurred in. The thirty-sixth letter, on the arrangement of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, turns certainly from the subject; but we may allow the exception, as this point is not alone interesting to Berlin, but in all points the examination is worth while, where there is any resemblance to or comparison with modern art.

It is proposed to add a second part to these letters, in which several treatises, written during the expedition, or on different points relating to Egyptian art or history, will be published.

Berlin, 2nd June, 1852.

CONTENTS.

View of Mount Sinai from the Sea at Gebel Zeit.

London, Richard Bentley, 1852. T. Brooker sc.

L E T T E R S
FROM
EGYPT, ETHIOPIA, AND THE PENINSULA
OF SINAI.

LETTER I.

On board the Oriental Steamer.
September 5, 1842.

All our endeavours were taxed to the utmost to render our departure on the 1st of September possible; one day’s delay would have cost us a whole month, and this month it was necessary to gain by redoubled activity. My trip to Paris, where I arrived in thirty hours from London, was unavoidable; two days were all that could be spared for the necessary purchases, letters, and notes, after which I returned richly laden from that city, ever so interesting and instructive to me. In London I obtained two other pleasant travelling companions, Bonomi and Wild, who had readily resolved to take part in the expedition. The former, long well known as a traveller in Egypt and Ethiopia, is not only full of practical knowledge of life in that country, but is also a fine connoisseur of Egyptian art, and a master in Egyptian drawing; the latter, a young genial-minded architect, enthusiastically seeks in the Orient new materials for his rich woof of combination.

At length everything was bought, prepared, packed, and we had said farewell to all our friends. Bunsen only, with his usual kindness and untiring friendship, accompanied us to Southampton, the place of embarkation, where he spent the evening with us.

As one usually arrives at a sudden, scarce comprehensible quietude, on entering a harbour from the stormy sea, after long and mighty excitement, and yet seems to feel the earth swimming beneath one, and to hear the breakers dashing around, so did it happen to me in a contrary manner, when, from the whirl of the last days and weeks in the haven, from the immeasurable world-city, I entered on the uniform desert of the ocean, in the narrow-bounded, soon-traversed house of planks. And now there was nothing more to be provided, nothing to be hurried; our long row of packages, more than thirty in number, had vanished, box by box, into the murky hold; our sleeping-places required no preparation, as they would scarcely hold more than our persons. The want of anxiety caused for some time a new and indefinite uneasiness, a solicitude without any object of solicitude.

Among our fellow-passengers I mention only the missionary Lieder, who, a German by birth, is returning with his English wife to Cairo. There he has founded and conducted a school since 1828, under the auspices of the English Missionary Society, which is now destined exclusively for the children of the Koptic Christians. Lieder has introduced into this school the study of the Koptic tongue, and thus once more brought into honour that remarkable and most ancient language of the country, which for several centuries has been totally superseded among the people by the Arabic. The Scriptures are, however, yet extant in the Koptic tongue, and even used in the service, but they are only intoned, and no longer understood.

On the 1st of September, at 10 o’clock, we left Southampton. We had the wind against us, and therefore did not reach Falmouth for four and twenty hours, where our vessel awaited the London post, to take the letters. There we remained several hours at anchor in a charming bay, at each side of the entrance of which an old castle lies upon the heights, while the town, situated in the background, form a most picturesque group. About 3 o’clock we went to sea again; the wind took us sideways, and caused much sickness amongst the passengers. I esteem myself fortunate, that in no passage, however stormy, have I had to complain of this disagreeable condition, which has, for the unsharing spectator, a comical aspect. It is, however, remarkable, that the very same movement that cradles every child to soft slumber, and forms the charm of a sail down the river, causes, by its protracted pendulum-like motion, unconquerable suffering, prostrating the strongest heroes, without, however, bringing them into any very serious danger.

Next day we reached the Bay of Biscay, and ploughed laboriously through the long deep waves that rolled to us from the far-off shore. Sunday morning, the 4th, we had a very small company at breakfast. About 11 o’clock we assembled to prayers, notwithstanding the continual motion. Over the pulpit the English flag was spread, as the most sacred cloth on board. Herr Lieder preached, simply and well. Toward 4 o’clock we began to see the Spanish coast, in light misty outlines. The nearer we approached it, the shorter the waves became, as the wind blew from the shore. The air, the heavens, and the ocean, were incomparably beautiful. Cape Finisterre and the neighbouring coast line came out more and more prominently. Gradually the whole company, even the ladies, assembled on deck. The sea smoothed itself to a bright mirror; the whole afternoon we kept the Spanish coast in sight. The sun set magnificently in the sea; the evening-star was soon followed by the whole host of heavenly stars, and a glorious night rose above us.

Then it was that the most splendid spectacle commenced that I have ever beheld at sea. The ocean began to sparkle; all the combs of the breaking waves burnt in emerald-green fire, and from the paddles of the vessel dashed a bright greenish-white torrent of flame, which drew behind it, for a great distance, a broad flashing stripe amidst the darkling waters. The sides of the vessel and our downward-looking faces were shone upon as if by moonbeams, and I could read print with the greatest ease by this water-fire. When the blazing mass, which, according to Ehrenberg’s researches, is caused by infusoria, was most intense, we saw flames dancing over the waves to the shore, so that it seemed as if we were traversing a more richly-starred heaven than the one we beheld above us. I have also beheld the oceanlight in the Mediterranean, but never in such extraordinary perfection as this time: the scene was magical.

Suddenly I saw new living fire-forms among the waves, that fled radiantly from the sides of the vessel. Like two giant serpents, which, judging from the length of the vessel, must have been from sixty to eighty feet long, they went trailing along beside the ship, crossing the waves, dipping in the foam of the wheels, coming forth again, retreating, hurrying, and losing themselves at last in the distance. For a long time I could assign no cause for this phenomenon. I recollected the old and oft-told tales of monstrous seasnakes that are seen from time to time. What I here beheld could not have resembled them more than it did. At length I thought that it might only be fishes, who, running a race with the steamer, and breaking the uniform surface of the water, caused the long streams of light behind them by their rapid motions. Still the eye was as much deceived as ever; I could discover nothing of the dark fishes, nor guess their probable size, but I contented myself at length with my supposition.

LETTER II.

Alexandria.
September 23, 1842.

My last letter I posted on the 7th of September, at Gibraltar, where we employed the few hours allotted to us in examining the fortress. The African continent lay before us, a bright stripe on the horizon; on the rocks beneath me climbed monkeys, the only ones in Europe in a wild state, for which reason they are preserved. In Malta, where we arrived on the eleventh of September, we found the painter Frey, from Basle, whose friendship I had made at Rome. He brought me intelligence by word of mouth that he would take part in the expedition, and for that purpose he had arrived several days before from Naples. We had to wait almost three days for the Marseilles post at this place. This gave us, at all events, the opportunity to visit the curiosities of the island, particularly the Cyclopean walls discovered some years before in the neighbourhood of La Valette, and also to make some purchases. Through Lieder I made the acquaintance of Gobat,[1] who until now had been the principal person at the Maltese station of the English Missionary Society, but who was now awaiting some new destination, as pecuniary circumstances had caused the Society to give up this station altogether. I had great pleasure in knowing so distinguished a person.

From Malta we were accompanied by the missionary Isenberg, who resided for a long time with Gobat in Abyssinia, and who is favourably known to philologists by his grammar of the Amharic language. Under his protection there was a young lady of Basle, Rosine Dietrich, the bride of the missionary Krapf, who has married her here, and will now return to the English missionary station at Shoa, by the next Indian steamer, with her and his colleagues, Isenberg and Mühleisen. He was married in the English chapel, and I was present as a witness at the solemnity, which was celebrated in a simple and pleasing manner.

On our arrival, on the 18th of September, we found Erbkam, Ernst Weidenbach, and Franke, who had been awaiting us for some days.

Mohammed Ali had sailed out in the fleet, as he looked anxiously forward to the arrival of Sami Bey, who was to bring him the desired reduction in tribute: instead of it he obtained the appointment of Grand Vizier.

The Swedish General Consul D’Anastasi, who manages the Prussian Consulate for our absent Consul Von Wagner, and who interests himself zealously in our behalf, presented us to-day to the Viceroy, and we have just returned from the audience. The Pasha expressed great pleasure at the vases which I had brought him in the name of His Majesty. Still more did he feel himself honoured by the letter of the King, of which he immediately had a translation prepared, reading it very attentively through in our presence. He signified to me his intention of giving us the reply when we again left the country. He received and dismissed us standing, had coffee presented, and showed us other attentions, which were afterwards carefully explained to me by D’Anastasi. Boghos Bey, his confidential minister, was the only person present, nor did he seat himself. Mohammed Ali showed himself brisk and youthful in his motions and conversation; no weakness was to be seen in the countenance and flashing eye of the old man of three-and-seventy springs. He spoke with interest of his Nile expeditions, and assured us that he should continue them until he had discovered the sources of the White River. To my question concerning his museum in Cairo, he replied that it was not yet very considerable; that many unjust requisitions were made of him in Europe, in desiring rapid progress in his undertakings, for which he had first to create the foundation, that had been prepared long since with us in Europe. I touched but slightly on our excavations, and took his permission for granted in conversation, expecting it to be soon given me in due form.[2]

LETTER III.

Cairo.
October 16, 1842.

We were detained nearly fourteen days in Alexandria. The whole time went in preparations for our journey; the Pasha I saw several times more, and I found him ever favourably disposed towards our expedition. Our scientific researches were inconsiderable. We visited the Pompeian pillar, which, however, stands in no relation to Pompey, but, as the Greek inscription on the base informs us, was erected to the Emperor Diocletian by the Præfect Publius. The blocks of the foundation are partly formed of the fragments of older buildings; on one of them the throne-cartouche of the second Psammetichus was yet distinguishable.

The two obelisks, of which the one still standing is named Cleopatra’s Needle, are much disintegrated on the weather side, and in parts have become quite illegible.[4] They were erected by Tuthmosis III. in the sixteenth century A.C.; at a later period, Ramses Miamun has inscribed himself; and still later, on the outermost edges, another King, who was found to be one, till now, totally unknown, and who was therefore greeted by me with great joy. I must yet mention an interesting collection of ethnographical articles and specimens of natural history of every kind which have been collected by a native Prussian, Werne,[5] on the second Nile expedition of the Pasha to the White River, in countries hitherto quite unknown, and have been transported to Alexandria but a few months ago. It appeared to me to be so important and so unique of its kind that I have purchased it for our museum. While we were yet there it was packed up for transport. I think it will be welcome in Berlin.

At length the bujurldis (passports) of the Pasha were ready, and now we made haste to quit Alexandria. We embarked the same day that I received them (on the 30th of September), on the Mahmoudîeh canal. Darkness surprised us ere we could finish our preparations. At 9 o’clock we left our hotel, in the spacious and beautiful Frank’s Place, in M. D’Anastasi’s two carriages; before us were the customary runners with torches. The gate was opened at the word that was given us; our packages had been transported to the bark several hours before upon camels, so that we could soon depart in the roomy vessel which I had hired in the morning. The Nile, into which we ran at Atfeh, rolled somewhat considerable waves, as there was a violent and unfavourable wind. Sailing is not without danger here, particularly in the dark, as the two customary pointed sails, like the wings of a bee, are easily blown down at every gust; therefore I advised the sailors to stop, which they did every night when it was stormy.

Next day, the 2nd of October, we landed at Sâ el Hager to visit the remains of ancient Saïs, that city of the Psammetiche so celebrated for its temple to Minerva. Scarcely anything exists of it but the walls, built of bricks of Nile earth, and the desolate ruins of the houses: there are no remains of any stone buildings with inscriptions. We paced the circumference of the city and took a simple plan of the locality. In the northwestern portion of the city her Acropolis once stood, which is still to be distinguished by higher mounds of rubbish. We stopped the night at Nekleh. I have the great charts of the Description de l’Egypte with me, on which we could follow almost every step of our trips. We found them, till now, very faithful everywhere.

On the 3rd we landed on the western bank, in order to see the remains of the ancient canal of Rosetta, and afterward spent nearly the whole of the afternoon in examining the ruins of an old city near Naharîeh; no walls are now visible, only rubbish-mounds remain; but we found in the houses of the new town, several stones bearing inscriptions, and mostly used for thresholds, originally belonging to a temple of King Psammetichus I. and Apries (Hophre). Next night, we stopped on the western shore near Teirîeh, and landed there the next morning, to seek for some ruins situated at about an hour’s distance, but from which we obtained nothing. The Libyan desert approaches quite close to the Nile here, for the first time, and gave us a novel, well-to-be-remembered prospect.

On the following morning we first perceived the great pyramids of Memphis rising up above the horizon: I could not turn my eyes away from them for a long time. We were still on the Rosetta branch; at noon we came to the so-called Cow’s Belly, where the Nile divides into its two principal arms. Now, for the first time, could we overlook the stately, wonderful river, resembling no other in its utmost grandeur, which rules the lives and manners of the inhabitants of its shores by its fertile and well-tasting waters. Toward the beginning of October it attains its greatest height. But this year there is an inundation like none that has been known for generations. People begin to be afraid of the dykes bursting, which would be the second plague brought upon Egypt in this year, after the great cattle murrain, which down to last week had carried off forty thousand head of cattle.

About five o’clock in the evening we arrived at Bulaq, the port of Cairo; we rode immediately from the harbour to the city, and prepared for a longer residence in this place. By-the-by, that we should say Cairo, and the French le Caire, is a manifest error. The town is now never called by any name but Mas’r by the Arabs, and so also the country; it is the ancient Semetic, more euphonious for us in the dual Mis’raim. First, at the foundation of the present city in the tenth century, New Mas’r was distinguished from the ancient Mas’r el Atîgeh, the present Old Cairo, by the addition of El Qâhireh, i. e. “the Victorious.” The Italians omitted the h, unpronounceable in their language, took the Arabic article el for their masculine il, and so considered the whole word, by its ending too, a masculine.

The holy month of the Mohammedans, the Ramadan, was just beginning, during which they take no sustenance throughout the day, nor do they drink water or “drink smoke;” and accept no visits, but begin all the business of life after sundown, and thus interchange day and night, which caused us no little trouble on account of our Arab servants. Our Khawass (the honorary guard of the Pasha that had been given us), who had missed the time for embarking at Alexandria, joined us here. As our Prussian Vice-consul was unwell, I addressed myself to the Austrian Consul, Herr Champion, to whom I had been recommended by Ehrenberg, regarding our presentations to the representative of the Pasha at this place. He interested himself for us with the greatest alacrity and zeal, and obtained us a good reception everywhere. The official visits, at which Erbkam and Bonomi mostly accompanied me, had to be made in the evening at about 8 o’clock, on account of the Ramadan. Our torch-bearers ran first, then came, on donkeyback, first the Dragoman of the Consul and the Khawass of the Pasha, and lastly ourselves in stately procession. We nearly traversed the whole town, through the Arab-filled streets, picturesquely lighted by our firebrands, to the citadel, where we first visited Abbas Pasha,[6] a grandson of Mahomet Ali; he is the governor of Cairo, though seldom in residence. From him we proceeded to Sherif Pasha, the lieutenant of Abbas, and then to the war minister, Ahmet Pasha. Everywhere we were received with great kindness.

The day after my arrival I received a diploma as an honorary member of the Elder Egyptian Society, of which the younger one, that had sent me a similar invitation while in London, was a branch. Both had meetings, but I could only attend the sittings of one, in which an interesting memoir by Krapf, on certain nations of Central Africa, was read. The particulars had been given him by a native of the Enarea country, who had travelled into the Doko country in commercial pursuits, and who described the people in much the same way that Herodotus does the Libyan dwarf-nation, after the narrations of the Nasamoneans, viz., as little people of the size of children of ten or twelve years of age. One would think that monkeys were spoken of. As the geographical notices of the till now almost unknown Doko country are of interest, I have had the whole paper copied, to send it, together with the little map that belongs to it, to our honoured friend Ritter.[7]

On the 13th of October we made a trip to the ruins of Heliopolis, the Biblical On, whence Joseph took his wife Asnath, the daughter of a priest. Nothing remains of this celebrated city, which prided itself on possessing the most learned priesthood next to Thebes, but the walls, which resemble great banks of earth, and an obelisk standing upright, and perhaps in its proper position. This obelisk possesses the peculiar charm of being by far the most ancient of all known obelisks; for it was erected during the Old Empire by King Sesurtesen I., about 2,300 B.C.; the broken obelisk in the Faîum near Crodilopolis, bearing the name of the same king, being rather an obelisk-like long-drawn stele. Boghos Bey has obtained the ground on which the obelisk stands as a present, and has made a garden round it. The flowers of the garden have attracted a quantity of bees, and these could find no more commodious lodging than in the deep and sharply cut hieroglyphics of the obelisk. Within the year they have so covered the inscriptions of the four sides, that a great part has become quite illegible. It had, however, already been published, and our comparison of it presented few difficulties, as three sides bear the same inscription, and the fourth is only slightly varied.

Yesterday, the 15th of October, was His Majesty’s birthday. I had determined on this day for our first visit to the great pyramid. There we would hold a festival in remembrance of our king and country with a few friends. We invited the Austrian Consul Champion, the Prussian Consul Bokty, our learned countryman Dr. Pruner, and MM. Lieder, Isenberg, Mühleisen, and Krapf to this party, at which, however, it is to be regretted that some were not able to assist.

The morning was indescribably beautiful, fresh, and festal. We rode in long procession through the quiet streets, and along the green alleys and gardens that are planted outside it. Almost in every place where there were well-tended plantations, we found that they had been laid out by Ibrahim Pasha. By all accounts, he appears to adorn and repair every portion of the country.

They were incomparable minutes, those, when we came forth from among the dates and acacias; the sun rising to the left behind the Moqattam Mountains, and illumining the heads of the pyramids opposite, that lay before in the plain like giant mountain crystals. All of us were enraptured by the glory and greatness of this morning scene, and solemnly impressed by it. At Old Cairo we were ferried across the Nile to the village of Gizeh, whence the larger pyramids receive the name of Háram el Gizeh. From here one may ride to the pyramids in the dry season in a direct line for an hour of little more. As, however, the inundation is now at its highest point, we were obliged to make a great circuit upon long embankments, coming almost up to Saqâra, and did not arrive at the foot of the great pyramid for five and a half hours.

The long and unexpected ride gave a relish to the simple breakfast that we immediately took in one of the tombs cut in the rock here about five thousand years ago, in order to strengthen us for the ascent. Meanwhile a spacious gaily-decked tent came down, which I had hired in Cairo. I had it pitched on the north side of the pyramid, and had the great Prussian standard, the black eagle with a golden sceptre and crown, and a blue sword, on a white ground, which had been prepared by our artists within these last few days, planted before the door of the tent.

About thirty Bedouins had assembled around us in the interval, and awaited the moment when we should commence the ascent of the pyramid, in order to assist us with their powerful brown arms to climb the steps, about three to four feet in height. Scarcely had the signal for departure been given, ere each of us was surrounded by several Bedouins, who tore us up the rough steep path to the apex like a whirlwind. A few minutes afterward our flag floated from the top of the oldest and highest of all the works of man with which we are acquainted, and we saluted the Prussian eagle with three cheers for our king. Flying toward the south, the eagle turned its crowned head homeward to the north, whence a fresh breeze was blowing, and diverting the effects of the hot rays of the noontide sun. We too, looked homeward, and each remembered, aloud, or quietly within his own heart, those whom he had left behind, loving and beloved.

Next, the prospect at our feet enchained our attention. On one side is the valley of the Nile, a wide ocean of inundated waters, which, intersected by long and serpentine embankments, broken now and then by island-like high-lying villages, and overgrown tongues of land, filled the whole plain of the vale, and reached to the opposite mountain chain of Moqattam, on the most northerly point of which the citadel of Cairo rises above the town lying beneath. On the other side, the Libyan desert, a still more wonderful ocean of sand and desolate rock-hills, boundless, colourless, soundless, animated by no beast, no plant, no trace of human presence, not even by graves; and between both is the desecrated Necropolis, the general plan and the particular outlines of which unfolded themselves sharply and plainly, as upon a map.

What a landscape! and with our view of it what a flood of reminiscences! When Abraham came to Egypt for the first time, he saw these pyramids which had been built many centuries before his arrival; in the plain before us lay ancient Memphis, the residence of those kings on whose graves we were standing; there lived Joseph, and ruled the land under one of the mightiest and wisest Pharaohs of the New Empire. Farther on, to the left of the Moqattam Mountains, where the fertile plain borders the eastern arm of the Nile, on the other side of Heliopolis, distinguishable by its obelisk, begins the fruitful country of Goshen, whence Moses led his people forth to the Syrian wilderness. Indeed, it would not be difficult to recognise from our position, that ancient fig-tree, on the way to Heliopolis, by Matarîeh, beneath the shade of which, according to the legends of the land, Mary rested with the Holy Child. How many thousands of pilgrims from all nations have sought these wonders of the world before our days,—we, the youngest in time, and yet only the predecessors of many thousands more who will come after us, and behold, and climb these pyramids, with astonishment. I will describe no farther the thoughts and feelings that came flooding in at those moments; there, at the aim and end of the wishes of many long years, and yet at the actual commencement of our expedition; there, on the apex of the Pyramid of Cheops, to which the first link of our whole monumental history is fastened immoveably, not only for Egyptian, but for universal history; there, where I saw beneath the remarkable grave-field whence the Moses-rod of science summons forth the shadows of the ancient dead, and lets them pass before us in the mirror of history, according to rank and age, with their names and titles, with all their peculiarities, customs, and associations.

After I had narrowly scanned the surrounding graves, with the intention of selecting some spots for future excavations, we descended once more to the entrance of the pyramid, procured lights, entered the slanting shaft with some guides, like miners, and reached the gallery by ways I well knew by drawings, and at the so-called King’s Chamber. Here we admired the infinitely fine joinings of the monster blocks, and examined the geological formation of the passages and spaces. Then we commenced our Prussian national hymn in the spacious saloon, the floor, walls, and ceiling of which are built of granite, and therefore return a sounding metal echo; and so powerful and solemn was the harmony, that our guides afterward reported to the other Bedouins outside, that we had selected the innermost recesses of the pyramid, in order to give forth a loud and universal prayer. We then visited the so-called Queen’s Chamber, and then left the pyramid, reserving the examination of the more intricate passages for a future and longer visit.

In the mean time our orientally-decked tent had been put in order, and a dinner prepared within, in which Prussians only took part, with the exception of our two English companions. That our first toast here was “His Majesty and the Royal family” need not be told; and no great eloquence was necessary to render all hearts enthusiastic in drinking it.

The rest of the day passed in gay, festal, and hearty reminiscences and conversations, till the time of our departure arrived. We had yet to wait a quarter of an hour after sunset, to give our attendants, donkey-drivers, and the rest of our Arab suite, time to eat their frugal dinner, which they had not yet taken, despite all the heat and labour of the day, in consequence of the Ramadan. Then the bright full moon guided us in the cool still night over the sand and water ocean, through villages and plantations of date-trees, back to the city. We did not arrive there until about midnight.

LETTER IV.

At the Foot of the Great Pyramid.
January 2, 1843.

Still here! in full activity since the 9th of November, and perhaps to continue so for some weeks of the new year! How could I have anticipated from the accounts of previous travellers, what a harvest we were to reap here,—here, on the oldest stage of the chronologically definable history of mankind. It is remarkable how little this most-frequented place of all Egypt has been examined hitherto. But I will not quarrel with our predecessors, since we inherit the fruits of their inactivity. I have been obliged the rather to restrain our curiosity to see more of this wonder-land, as we may half solve the problem at this place. On the best charts of former times, two graves have peculiar designations, beside the pyramids. Rosellini has only examined one grave more, and Champollion says in his letters, “Il y a peu à faire ici, et lorsqu’on aura copié des scenes de la vie domestique, sculptées dans un tombeau, je regagnerai nos embarcations!” [There is little to be done here, and when they have copied the scenes of domestic life sculptured in one tomb, I shall regain our vessels.] We have given in our exact topographical plan of the whole Necropolis forty-five graves, with whose inmates I have become acquainted by their inscriptions, and I have enumerated eighty-two in all, which seemed worthy of notice on account of their inscriptions, or some other peculiarities.[8] Of these but few belong to the later time; nearly all of them were erected during or shortly after the building of the great pyramid, and therefore present us with an inestimable series of dates for the knowledge of the oldest definable civilisation of the races of man. The architecture of that age, concerning which I could formerly offer only a few speculations,[9] now lies before me in the fullest circumstantiality. Nearly all the branches of architecture are to be found developed; sculptures of complete figures of all dimensions, in haut-relief and bas-relief, present themselves in the most astonishing variety. The style is very marked and finely executed, but it is clear that the Egyptians had not then that peculiar canon of proportion which we find universally at a later period.[10] The painting on the fine plaster is often more beautiful than could be expected, and occasionally exhibits the freshness of yesterday in perfect preservation. The subjects on the walls are usually representations of scenes from the life of departed persons, and seem mostly intended to place their riches, cattle, fish, boats, hunts, and servants, before the eyes of the observer. Through them we become acquainted with every particular of their private life. The numerous inscriptions describe or name these scenes, or they set forth the often widely-extended family of the departed, and all his offices and titles, so that I could almost write a Court and State Directory of the time of King Cheops, or Chephren. The most stately tombs or rock graves belonged chiefly to the princes, relations, or highest officers of those kings near whose pyramids they are situated; and not unfrequently I have found the graves of father, son, grandson, and even great-grandson; so that whole genealogies of those distinguished families, the nobility of the land fifty centuries ago, may be formed. The most beautiful of the tombs, which I have discovered among many others in the all-burying sand, belongs to a prince[11] of King Cheops.

I employ forty to sixty people every day in excavations and similar labours. Also before the great Sphinx I have had excavations made to bring to light the temple between its paws, and to lay open the colossal stele formed of one block of granite, eleven feet high and seven feet broad, serving as a back wall to the temple, and covered to about its own height with sand. It is one of the few memorials here of the great Pharaohs of the New Empire, after the expulsion of the Hyksos. I have had a plaster cast taken of it.

The Egyptian winter is not always so spring-like as one occasionally imagines in Europe. At sunrise, when every one hurries to work, we have already had +5° Réaumur, so that the artists could hardly use their fingers.

Winter began with a scene that will ever remain impressed upon my memory. I had ridden out to the excavations, and as I observed a great black cloud coming up, I sent an attendant to the tents, to make them ready against it, but soon followed him myself, as it began to rain a little. Shortly after my arrival, a storm began, and I therefore had the tent ropes made fast; soon, however, there came a pouring rain, that frightened all our Arabs, and sent them trooping to the rock-tomb, where our kitchen is situated. Of our party, Erbkam and Franke were only present. Suddenly the storm grew to a tremendous hurricane, such as I have never seen in Europe, and hail fell upon us in such masses, as almost to turn day into night. I had the greatest difficulty in hunting our Arabs out from the cavern, to bring our things to the tombs under shelter, as we might expect the destruction of our tents at any moment; and it was no long time ere first our common tent broke down, and then, as I hurried from it into my own, to sustain it from the inside, that also broke down above my head. When I had crept out, I found that my things were tolerably well covered by the tents, so that I could leave them for the present, but only to run a greater risk. Our tents lie in a valley, whither the plateau of the pyramids inclines, and are sheltered from the worst winds from the north and west. Presently I saw a dashing mountain flood hurrying down upon our prostrate and sand-covered tents, like a giant serpent upon its certain prey. The principal stream rolled on to the great tent; another arm threatened mine, without quite reaching it. But everything that had been washed from our tents by the shower was torn away by the two streams, which joined behind the tents, and carried into a pool behind the Sphinx, where a great lake immediately formed, which fortunately had no outlet.

Just picture this scene to yourself! our tents, dashed down by the storm and heavy rain, lying between two mountain torrents, thrusting themselves in several places to the depth of six feet into the sand, and depositing our books, drawings, sketches, shirts, and instruments—yes, even our levers and iron crowbars; in short, every thing they could seize, in the dark, foaming, mud ocean. Besides this, ourselves wet to the skin, without hats, fastening up the weightier things, rushing after the lighter ones, wading into the lake to the waist to fish out what the sand had not yet swallowed; and all this was the work of a quarter of an hour, at the end of which the sun shone radiantly again, and announced the end of this flood by a bright and glorious rainbow.

It was difficult to see at once what we had lost, and where we ought to begin to bring things into order again. The two Weidenbachs and Frey had observed the whole scene from the tombs where they were at work, as a mighty drama of nature, and without even dreaming of the mischances that had happened to us, until I sent for them to assist in preparing for the quickly-approaching night. For several more days we fished and dug for our things. Some things were lost, many were spoilt; the greater part of all the things that were not locked up inside chests or trunks bore at least more or fewer marks of this flood. After all, there was nothing of much importance lost; I had first secured the great portfolios, together with my manuscripts and books; in short, after a few days the whole thing took the form of a remarkable picture, leaving no unpleasant reminiscence, and of which I should grudge my memory the loss.

Since then, we have suffered much from violent gales, that occasionally so fill the atmosphere with sand that respiration is rendered difficult, painting with colours is totally precluded, and drawing and writing paper is continually covered with a most disagreeable, ever-renewed dust. This fine sand penetrates one’s clothes, enters all our boxes, even when most closely shut, fills one’s nose, ears, hair, and is the unavoidable pepper to every dish and drink.

January 5. On the evening of the first Christmas holiday, I surprised my companions by a large bonfire, which I had lighted at the top of the greatest pyramid. The flame shone magnificently upon the two other pyramids, as well as on the Necropolis, and threw its light far over the dale to Cairo. That was a Christmas pyramid! I had only confided the secret to Abeken, who had arrived, with his ever merry humour and his animated and instructive conversation, upon the 10th of December. With his assistance I prepared something for the following night, in the Royal Chamber of the Great Pyramid. We planted a young palm-tree in the sarcophagus of the ancient king, and adorned it with lights and little presents that I had sent for from the city for us children of the wilderness. Saint Sylvester also must receive due honour. On New Year’s eve, at midnight, there arose mighty flames from the heights of the three great pyramids, and announced, far and wide in the regions of Islâm, at their feet, the change of the Christian year.[12]

I consider it a proper mental diet for our company to break and interrupt our laborious, and, for the artists, very monotonous occupations, not only by the hebdomadal rest of Sunday, but also by pleasant parties of pleasure and gay festivals, as often as opportunity will admit. As yet, the harmony and good humour of our society have not been disturbed by the slightest echo of discord; and they gain new strength every day, as well by the fulness of our novel impressions and the reciprocal tastes and natures of our companions, as by the obstacles and hardships of this Bedouin life.

How manifold the elements of our community are, you may perceive by the true Babel of languages in which we are ever moving. The English language is sufficiently represented by our companions, Wild and Bonomi; French and Italian serve as a medium of communication with the authorities, our chance guests, and the Levantine merchants; in Arabic we command, eat, and travel; and in very capital German we consult, chatter, sing, and live. As long as it is day we are generally each alone, and uninterruptedly at work. The morning coffee is drunk before sunrise; after sunset, dinner is served; and we breakfast while at work. Thus our artists have been already enabled to prepare a hundred great folio leaves, partly executed in lead, partly finished off in colours, for our swelling portfolios.

LETTER V.

Pyramids of Gizeh.
January 17, 1843.

The inscription composed in commemoration of the birthday festival of His Majesty has become a stone tablet, after the manner of the ancient steles and proscynemata. Here it is:—

and its contents, which, the more they assimilate with the Egyptian style, become proportionately awkward in the German, are as follows:—

“Thus speak the servants of the King, whose name is the Sun and Rock of Prussia, Lepsius the scribe, Erbkam the architect, the brothers Weidenbach the painters, Frey the painter, Franke the former, Bonomi the sculptor, Wild the architect:—Hail to the Eagle, Shelterer of the Cross, the King, the Sun and Rock of Prussia, the son of the Sun, freer of the land, Frederick William the Fourth, the Philopator, his country’s father, the gracious, the favourite of wisdom and history, the guardian of the Rhine stream, chosen by Germany, the giver of life. May the highest God grant the King and his wife, the Queen Elisabeth, the life-rich one, the Philometor, her country’s mother, the gracious, a fresh-springing life on earth for long, and a blessed habitation in Heaven for ever. In the year of our Saviour 1842, in the tenth month, and the fifteenth day, on the seven and fortieth birthday of His Majesty, on the pyramid of King Cheops; in the third year, the fifth month, the ninth day of the Government of His Majesty; in the year 3164 from the commencement of the Sothis period under King Menephthes.”

Upon a large and expressly hewn and prepared stone, at some height, by the entrance to the Pyramid of Cheops, we have left the hieroglyphical inscription upon a space of five feet in breadth, and four feet in height, painted in with oil-colours.

It seemed good to me, that the Prussian Expedition, while it dedicated this tablet to the much-respected prince who had sent the Expedition hither, should leave some trace of its activity in this field, where it had been reserved for that enterprise to gather in the plenteous materials for the first chapter of all scientific history.

Do not imagine, however, that these are the weighty labours that have kept us so long here. It is from the advantage which we possess over former travellers that places like these have the right to detain us until we have exhausted them. We already know that the grand ruins of the Thebaïc plain cannot discover anything to us of similar interest to the Memphitic period of the Old Empire.

At some time we must of course leave off, and then always with the certainty that we leave much behind us, of the greatest interest, that has still to be won. I had already determined upon our departure some days since, when a row of tombs were discovered of a new period, a new architecture, a new style in the figures and hieroglyphics, with other titles, and, as it might have been expected, with other royal names.

Our historical gain is by no means perfected, nor is it even general. I was quite right in giving up the task of reconstructing the third dynasty after monuments, while in Europe. Nor have I yet found a single cartouche that can be safely assigned to a period previous to the fourth dynasty. The builders of the Great Pyramid seem to assert their right to form the commencement of monumental history, even if it be clear that they were not the first builders and monumental writers. We have already found some hitherto unknown cartouches and variants of others, such as:—

The name that I have hitherto treated as Amchura shows, in the complete and painted inscriptions, which throw not a little light upon the figurative meanings of the hieroglyphic writings, a totally different sign, to the well-known group,

amchu, viz.:

, the pronunciation of which is yet uncertain to me.[13]

In the classification of the pyramids there is nothing to be altered. It cannot be doubted, after our researches, that the second pyramid really is to be assigned to Shafra (more correctly Chafra the Chephren of Herodotus), as the first to Chufu (Cheops), and the third to Menkera (Mycerinos, Mencherinos). I think I have found the path from the valley to the second pyramid; it leads right up to its temple, by the Sphinx, but was probably destroyed at an early period. The number of pyramids, too, is continually increasing. At Abu Roash I have found three pyramids in the place of that single one already known, and two fields of tombs; also near Zauiet el Arrian, an almost forgotten village, there once stood two pyramids, and a great field of ruins is adjoining. The careful researches and measurements of Perring, in his fine work upon the pyramids, save us much time and trouble. Therefore we could give ourselves more to the tombs and their hieroglyphical paintings, which are altogether wanting in the pyramids. But nothing is yet completed, nothing is ripe for definitive arrangement, though comprehensive views are now opened. Our portfolios begin to swell; much has been cast in gypsum; among other things, the great stele of the first year of Tuthmosis IV. between the paws of the Sphinx.

LETTER VI.

Pyramids of Gizeh.
January 28, 1843.

I have ordered ten camels to come here to-morrow night, that we may depart early, before sunrise, the day after, with our already somewhat extensive collection of original monuments and gypsum casts, for Cairo, where we shall deposit them until our return from the south. This will be the commencement of our movement toward Saqâra. A row of very recently discovered tombs, of the dynasties immediately following that of Cheops, has once retarded our departure. The fifth dynasty, which appears as an Elephantine contemporaneous dynasty in Africanus,[14] and was not at all to be expected as such here, now lies completed before us, and in general precisely as I had constructed it in Europe. The gaps have been filled up with three kings, whose names were then unknown. Also some kings, formerly hanging in mid-air, have been won for the seventh and eighth dynasties, of which we had previously no monumental names whatever. The proof of the fifth dynasty following the fourth immediately would in itself richly recompense us for our stay of several months at this place; and besides this, we have still much to do with structures, sculptures, and inscriptions, which, by the continually increasing certitude of the royal names, are formed into one cultivated epoch, dating about the year 4000 B.C. One can never recall these till now incredible dates too often to the memory of one’s-self and others; the more criticism is challenged, and obliged to give a serious examination to the matter, the better for the cause. Conviction will follow criticism, and then we shall arrive at the consequences that are linked with it in every branch of archæology.

With this letter you will receive a roll containing several drawings which have been copied from the tombs here. They are splendid specimens of the oldest architecture, sculpture, and painting that art-history has to show, and the most beautiful and best preserved of all those that we have found in the Necropolis. I hope we shall some day see these chambers fully erected in the New Museum at Berlin.[15] They would certainly be the most beautiful trophy that we could bring with us from Egypt. Their transportation would probably be attended with some difficulty; for you may judge by the dimensions that ordinary means will not suffice to do it. I have therefore asked, in a letter addressed directly to His Majesty the King, whether it would not be possible to send a vessel next year, or at the close of the expedition, with some workpeople and tools, in order to take these monuments to pieces more carefully than we can do, and bring them with the rest of the collections to Berlin.

Six of the enclosed leaves are drawings of a tomb which I myself discovered under the sand, and the paintings of which are almost as fresh and perfect as you may perceive them in the drawing.[16] It was the last resting-place of Prince Merhet, who, as he was a priest of Chufu (Cheops), named one of his sons Chufu-mer-nuteru, and possessed eight villages, the names of which were compounded with that of Chufu; and the position of the grave on the west side of the pyramid of Chufu, as well as perfect identity of style in the sculptures, renders it more than probable that Merhet was the son of Chufu, by which the whole representations are rendered more interesting. This prince was also “Superintendent-General of the royal buildings,” and thus had the rank of Ober-hof Baurath (High Court-architect), a great and important post in these times of magnificent architecture, and which we have often found under the direction of princes and members of the royal family. It is therefore to be conjectured that he also over-looked the building of the Great Pyramid. Would not this alone have justified the undertaking of transporting to Berlin the well-joined grave-chamber of this princely architect, which will otherwise be destroyed at a longer or shorter period by the Arabs, and built into their ovens, or burnt in their kilns! There, at least, it would be preserved, and accessible for the admiration or scientific ardour of the curious, as indeed European art and science teaches us to respect and value such monuments. For its re-erection it would require a width of 6 métres 30´, a height of 4 m. 60’, and a depth of 3 m. 80´; and such a space can certainly be reserved for it in the New Museum.[17]

I must remark, in addition, that such chambers form only a very small portion of the tomb, and were not intended for the mummy. The tomb of Prince Merhet is more than 70 feet long, 45 broad, and 15 high. It is massively constructed of great blocks of freestone, with slanting outer surfaces. The chamber only is covered with rafters, and one, or in this case two, square shafts lead from the flat roof through the building into living rock, at the bottom of which, sixty feet below, rock-chambers open at each side, in which the sarcophagi were placed. The remains of the reverend skull of the Cheoptic prince, which I found in his mummy-chamber, I have carefully preserved. To my sorrow we found but little more, because this grave, like most of the others, has long been broken into. Originally the entrance was closed with a stone slab. Only the supersurfacial chamber remained open always, and was therefore adorned with representations and inscriptions. Thither were brought the offerings to the departed. It was dedicated to the religious belief of the dead person, and thus answered to the temple that was built before each pyramid for the adoration of its royal inmate. In the same way as those temples, so these chambers always open to the east. The shafts, like the pyramids, lie behind to the west, because the departed was supposed to be in the west, whither he had gone with the setting sun to Osiris in Amente.

Finally, the seventh leaf contains two pillars and their architrave, from the tomb of a royal relative, who was also the prophet of four kings, named Ptah-nefru-be’u. The grave was constructed at a later period than that of Prince Merhet, in the fifth dynasty of Manetho.[18] It belongs to a whole group of tombs, the architectural disposition and intercommunication of which are very curious, and which I have therefore laid quite open to the daylight, while before neither the entrance nor anything else but the crown of the outer wall was to be seen.

I also send you the complete plan of it, besides that of the neighbouring graves, but only think of bringing the architrave and the two finely-painted pillars of the southern space, which may be easily removed. On the architrave the legend of the departed is inscribed, who is also represented on the four sides of the pillars in full size. In front, on the north pillar, is seen the father of the dead person, Ami; on the southern one is his grandfather, Aseskef-anch. The pillars are about twelve feet in height, are slim, and are always without capitals, but with an abacus.

At the tomb of Prince Merhet I have had the whole chamber isolated, but have given up the design of taking it down for the present, as the season is not the most favourable for transporting it. I have therefore filled this grave and the other with sand, and to-morrow, on my arrival in Cairo, I shall obtain an order interdicting the removal of any of the stones of those tombs which we had opened. For it is most annoying to see great caravans of camels coming hither from the neighbouring villages, and going off in long strings loaded with slabs for building. Fortunately,—for what is not fortunate under circumstances!—the lazy Fellahs are rather attracted by the tombs of the age of the Psammetici than by those of the older dynasties, the great blocks of which are not handy enough for them. I am more seriously alarmed, however, for the tombs of the fifth and seventh dynasties, which are built of more moderately sized stones. Yesterday the robbers threw down a fine, steady, fully-inscribed pillar when our backs were turned. Their efforts to break it up seem not to have been successful. The people have become so feeble here, that, with all their mischievous industry, their powers are not sufficient to destroy what their mighty ancestors had raised.

Some days ago, we found, standing in its original place in a grave of the beginning of the seventh dynasty, an obelisk of but a few feet in height, but well preserved, and bearing the name of the person to whom the tomb was erected. This form of monument, which plays so conspicuous a part in the New Empire, is thus thrown some dynasties farther back into the Old Empire than even the obelisk of Heliopolis.

LETTER VII.

Saqâra.
March 18, 1843.

A short time ago, I made a trip, in company with Abeken and Bonomi, to the more distant pyramids of Lisht and Meidûm. The latter interested me particularly, as it has solved for me the riddle of pyramidal construction, on which I had long been employed.[19] It lies almost in the valley of the plain, close by the Bahr Jussuf, and is only just removed from the level of inundation, but it towers so loftily and grandly from the low neighbourhood that it attracts attention from a great distance. From a casing of rubbish that surrounds almost the half of it, to the height of 120 feet, a square, sharp-edged centre rises after the manner of a tower, which lessens but little at the top, i. e. in an angle of 74°. At the elevation of another 100 feet there is a platform on which, in the same angle, stands a slenderer tower of moderate height, which again supports the remains of a third elevation in the middle of its flat upper side. The walls of the principal tower are mostly polished, flat, but are interrupted by rough bands, the reason of which seems hardly comprehensible. On a closer examination, however, I found also within the half-ruined building, round the foot, smoothened walls rising at the same angle as the tower, before which there lay other walls, following each other like shells. At last I discovered that the whole structure had proceeded from a little pyramid, which had been built in steps to about the height of 40 feet, and had then been enlarged and raised in all directions by a stone casing of 15 to 20 feet in breadth, till at last the great steps were filled out to a surface, and the whole received the usual pyramidal form.

This gradual accumulation explains the monstrous size of single pyramids among so many smaller ones. Each king commenced the construction of his pyramid at his accession; he made it but small at first, in order to secure himself a perfect grave even if his reign should be but short. With the passing years of his government, however, he enlarged it by adding outer casings, until he thought himself near the end of his days. If he died during the erection of it, the outermost casing only was finished, and thus the size of the pyramid stood ever in proportion to the length of the king’s reign. Had the other determinative relations remained the same in the lapse of ages, one might have told off the number of years of each monarch’s reign by the casings of the pyramids, like the annual rings of trees.

Yet the great enigma of the bearded giant Sphinx remains unsolved! When and by whom was this colossus raised, and what was its signification? We must leave this question to be decided by our future and more fortunate successors. It is almost half-buried in sand, and the granite stele of eleven feet in height between his paws, forming alone the back wall of a small temple erected here, was altogether concealed; for the immense excavations which were undertaken by Caviglia, in 1818, have long since tracelessly disappeared. By the labour of some sixty to eighty persons for several days, we arrived almost at the base of the stele, which I had immediately sketched, pressed in paper, and cast, in order to erect it at Berlin. This stele, on which the Sphinx itself is represented, was erected by Tuthmosis IV., and is dated in the first years of his government; he must therefore have found the colossus there. We are accustomed to find the Sphinx in Egypt used as the sign for a king, and, indeed, usually as some particular king, whose features it would appear to preserve, and therefore they are always Androsphinxes, with the solitary exception of a female Sphinx, which represents the wife of King Horus. In hieroglyphical writings the Sphinx is named Neb, “the Lord,” and forms, among other instances, the middle syllable of the name of King Necta-neb-us.

But what king is represented by the monster? It stands before the second pyramid, that of Shafra (Chephren), not directly in the axis, but parallel with the sides of the temple lying before it, and precisely as if the northern rock by the Sphinx had been intended for a corresponding sculpture; besides this, it was usual for Sphinxes, Rams, statues, and obelisks, to be placed in pairs before the entrances of the temples. What a mighty impression, however, would two such giant guardians, between which the ancient pathway to the temple of Chephren led, have made upon the approaching worshipper! They would have been worthy of that age of colossal monuments, and in right proportions to the pyramid behind. I cannot deny that this connection would best satisfy me. What would have induced the Thebaïc kings of the eighteenth dynasty, the only ones of the New Empire to be thought of, to adorn the Memphitic Necropolis with such a world-wonder without any connection with its surrounding objects? Add to this, that in an almost destroyed line of the Tuthmosis stele, King Chephren is named; a portion of his royal cartouche, unfortunately quite single, is yet preserved; it undoubtedly had some reference to the builder of the pyramid lying behind it.

But the question again arises:—If King Chephren be here represented, why does it not bear his name? On the contrary, it is named Har-em-chu, “Horus in the horizon,” that is to say, the Sungod, the type of all kings, and Harmachis, in a Greek inscription found before the Sphinx. It does not seem at all unlikely to me, that upon this rests the fable of Pliny, according to which a King Amasis (Armasis? Ἅρμαχις) lies interred within the Sphinx;[20] for in a real burial there can be no belief. Another consideration is that I have not found the representation of the Sphinx in those most ancient times of the pyramid builders; but that must not be accepted as conclusive, as the Sphinx is not often found in the inscriptions and representations of the new empire.[21] In short, the Œdipus for this king of all Sphinxes is yet wanting. Whoever would drain the immeasurable sand-flood which buries the tombs themselves, and lay open the base of the Sphinx, the ancient temple path, and the surrounding hills, could easily decide it.

But with the enigmas of history there are joined many riddles and wonders of nature, which I must not leave quite unnoticed. The newest of all, at least, I must describe.

I had descended with Abeken into a mummy pit, to open some newly-discovered sarcophagi, and was not a little astonished, upon descending, to find myself in a regular snow-drift of locusts, which, almost darkening the heavens, flew over our heads from the south-west from the desert in hundreds of thousands to the valley. I took it for a single flight, and called my companions from the tombs where they were busy, that they might see this Egyptian wonder ere it was over. But the flight continued; indeed the work-people said it had begun an hour before. Then we first observed that the whole region near and far was covered with locusts. I sent an attendant into the desert, to discover the breadth of the flock. He ran for the distance of a quarter of an hour, then returned and told us that, as far as he could see, there was no end to them. I rode home in the midst of the locust shower. At the edge of the fruitful plain they fell down in showers; and so it went on the whole day till the evening, and so the next day from morning till evening, and the third; in short, to the sixth day, indeed in weaker flights much longer. Yesterday it did seem that a storm of rain in the desert had knocked down and destroyed the last of them. The Arabs are now lighting great fires of smoke in the fields, and clattering and making loud noises all day long to preserve their crops from the unexpected invasion. It will, however, do little good. Like a new animated vegetation, these millions of winged spoilers cover even the neighbouring sandhills, so that scarcely anything is to be seen of the ground; and when they rise from one place, they immediately fall down somewhere in the neighbourhood; they are tired with their long journey, and seem to have lost all fear of their natural enemies, men, animals, smoke, and noise, in their furious wish to fill their stomachs, and in the feeling of their immense number. The most wonderful thing, in my estimation, is their flight over the naked wilderness and the instinct which has guided them from some oasis over the inhospitable desert to the fat soil of the Nile vale. Fourteen years ago, it seems, this Egyptian plague last visited Egypt with the same force. The popular idea is, that they are sent by the comet which we have observed for twelve days in the south-west, and which, as it is now no longer obscured by the rays of the moon, stretches forth its stately tail across the heavens in the hours of night. The zodiacal light, too, so seldom seen in the north, has lately been visible for several nights in succession.

At this place have I first been able to settle my account with Gizeh, and to put together the historical results of the investigation. I have every reason to rejoice at the consequences; the fourth and fifth dynasties are completed all except one king.

I have just received the rather illegible drawing of a stone in a wall at the village of Abusir, which presents a row of kings of the fourth and fifth dynasties, and, as it would seem, in chronological order. I am on the point of riding over to see the original.

LETTER VIII.

Saqâra.
April 13, 1843.

I hasten to inform you of an event which I should not like to be first communicated to you from other quarters, and perhaps with distorted exaggeration. Our camp was attacked and robbed a few nights since by an armed band, but none of our party have been seriously hurt, and nothing has been lost that is not to be replaced. The matter is past, and the consequences can only be favourable to us; but I must first go back a few days in my report.

On the 3rd of April, H.R.H. Prince Albrecht returned from Upper Egypt to Cairo; next day I went to town and submitted a portion of our labours to him, in which he took the more lively interest as he had already seen more of the wonder-land than we, and had only omitted to visit the pyramid fields. On his former arrival in Cairo I was absent with Abeken and Bonomi on a journey of several days’ duration in the Faiûm. The Prince came just in time for some Mohammedan festivals, which I should have neglected but for his presence. On the sixth was the entrance of the solemnly-welcomed caravan of pilgrims from Mecca, and a few days later, the birthday festival of the prophet “Mulid e’Nebbi,” one of the most original feasts throughout the Orient. The principal parts fall to the share of the Derwishes, who arrange processions during the day, and in the evening exhibit their terrible dance named Sikr in the gaily-lighted tents erected among the trees of the Ezbekîeh; thirty to forty of this religious sect place themselves in a circle, and begin to move their bodies backward and forward, according to the time, first slowly, and then more violently, at last with the most cruel strains upon the nerves; at the same time they repeat their maxim rhythmically with a loud howling voice, “Lâ ilâha ill’ Allah” (no God but Allah), gradually lowering and softening the tone until it is resembles a faint snore: at length, their powers wholly exhausted, some fall down, others withdraw reelingly, and the broken circle, after a short pause, is replaced by another.

What a fearful, barbarous worship, which the astounded multitude, great and small, gentle and simple, gaze upon seriously and with stupid respect, and in which it not unfrequently takes a part! The invoked deity is manifestly much less an object of reverence than the fanatic saints who invoke him; for mad, idiotic, or other psychologically-diseased persons, are very generally looked upon as holy by the Mohammedans, and treated with great respect. It is the demoniacal, incomprehensibly-acting, and therefore fearfully-observed power of nature, that the natural man always reveres when he perceives it, because he is sensible of some connection between it and his intellectual power, without being able to command it; first in the mighty elements, then in the wondrous but obscure law-governed instincts of animals, and, at last, in the yet more overpowering exstatical, or generally abnormal mental condition of his own race. We must decidedly look upon the Egyptian animal-worship, as far as it was not the covering for deeper and more refined doctrines, as resting upon the same idea of a worship of nature;[22] and the reverence occasionally manifesting itself among some nations of mentally-diseased men may be regarded as a curious branch of the same feeling. Whether such conditions really exist, or whether, as with the derwishes, they are artificially produced and purposely fostered, is not criticised by the masses, and it is much the same in individual cases. In such a presence one would feel oneself overcome by a mysterious feeling of dread, and would not care to express repugnance, or even to manifest it by signs, or by a token of having even observed anything, for fear of diverting to oneself the storm of brute passion.

The nine days’ festival closes with a peculiar ceremony called doseh, the treading, but which I was myself prevented from witnessing. The sheîkh of the Saadîeh-derwishes rides to the chief sheîkh of all the derwishes of Egypt, El Bekri. On the way thither, a great number of these holy folk, and others too, who fancy themselves not a whit behindhand in piety, throw themselves flat on the ground, with their faces downward, and so that the feet of one lie close to the head of the next; over this living carpet, the sheikh rides on his horse, which is led on each side by an attendant, in order to compel the animal to the unnatural march. Each man’s body receives two treads of the horse; most of them jump up again without hurt, but whoever suffers serious, or, as it occasionally happens, mortal injury, has the additional ignominy to bear, for not having pronounced, or for not being able to pronounce, the proper prayers and magical charms that alone could save him.[23]

On the 7th of April, I and Erbkam accompanied the prince to the pyramids, and first to those of Gizeh. The pyramid of Cheops was ascended, and the inside visited; the beautiful tomb of Prince Merhet I had had laid open for the purpose of showing it. Then we left for our camp at Saqâra.

Here we heard that a barefaced robbery had been committed in Abeken’s tent the night before. While he was asleep, with a light burning, after his return from Cairo, his knapsack, pistols, and a few other matters lying about, were stolen; as the thief was departing, a noise was perceived by the guard, but the darkness precluded all pursuit.

After the prince had inspected the most beautiful tomb of Saqâra, we rode across the plain to Mitrahinneh to visit the mound of Memphis, and the half-buried colossus of Ramses Miamun (Sesostris), the face of which is almost perfectly preserved.[24] Late at night, we arrived again in Cairo, after sixteen hours of motion, scarcely interrupted by short pauses of rest; the unusual fatigue, however, rather raised the lively taste for travelling in the prince’s mind than otherwise.

The next day the mosques of the city were visited, which are partly worthy of notice for their magnificence, and are partly of interest in the history of mediæval art on account of the earliest specimen of the general application of the pointed arch. The questions touching this characteristic architectural branch of the so-called Gothic style had employed me so much some years ago, that I could not avoid pursuing the old traces; the pointed arch is found in the oldest mosques up to the ninth century. With the conquest of Sicily by the Arabs, this form of the arch was carried over to the island, where the next conquerors, the Normans, found it in the eleventh century, and were led to employ it much. To deny some historical connection between the Norman pointed arch of Palermo and our northern style appears to me to be impossible; the admission of such a connection would certainly render it more difficult to explain of the sporadically but not lawlessly used rows of pointed arches which occur in the cathedral of Naumburg in the eleventh century, and at Memleben already in the tenth. The theorists will not yet admit this; but I must await the confutation of these reasons.[25]

The Nilometer on the island of Roda, which we visited after the mosques, also contains a row of pointed arches, which belong to the original building, going back to the ninth century, as the carefully-examined Kufic inscriptions testify.

Egypt does not only lay claim to the oldest employment, and therefore probable invention, of the pointed arches, but also upon that of the circular arch.[26] Near the pyramids a group of tombs may be seen, the single blocks of which manifest the proper concentric way of cutting. They belong to the twenty-sixth Manethonic dynasty of the Psammetici, i. e. in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., are therefore of about the same antiquity as the Cloaca maxima and the Carcer Mamertinus at Rome. We have also found tombs with vaults of Nile bricks, that go back as far as the era of the pyramids. Now I deny, in contradistinction to the opinion of others, that the brick arch, the single flat bricks of which are only placed concentrically by the aid of the trowel, admits of a previous knowledge of the actual principle of the arch, and particularly with respect to its sustaining power, of which denial there is already proof in the fact that before the Psammetici there is no instance of a concentrically laid arch, but many pseudo-arches, cut, as it were, in horizontal layers. But where the brick arch was ancient, we may also most naturally place the origin of the later concentric stone arch, or at least admit of its appearing contemporaneously in other lands.

I was about to accompany the prince the next morning to the interesting institution of Herr Lieder, when Erbkam unexpectedly arrived from our camp. He reported that on the previous night, between three and four o’clock A.M., a number of shots were suddenly fired in the neighbourhood of our tents, and at the same time a crowd of more than twenty people rushed into the encampment. Our tents stand on a small surface before the rock tombs, which are excavated half-way up the steep wall of the Libyan Vale, and have a considerable terrace in front, formed by the rubbish. Almost the only way in which it was to be approached was on one side by a gorge that passes down from above by our tents. Thence the attack was made. It was first directed against the tent which served as a salōn for our whole society. This soon fell down in a mass. Then followed the other great tent in which slept Erbkam, Frey, Ernst Weidenbach, and Franke. This was also torn down, and covered up its inhabitants, who had great difficulty in creeping out from among the ropes and tent-cloths. Besides this, all the guns had been placed in one tent together on the previous day, at the visit of the prince, and fastened to the centre pole, so that they were not at hand. The guards, cowardly in the extreme, and knowing that they had made themselves liable to punishment, even if such a thing had happened without their being in fault, immediately fled with loud cries in every direction, and have not yet returned. The thieves now stuck to what was nearest at hand, rolled everything they could lay hold of down the hill, and were soon lost in the plains below. Their shots had evidently been blank, for no one had been hurt by them; but they had gained their object of rendering the confusion greater. Only Ernst Weidenbach and a few of our attendants were wounded in the head or shoulders by blows from gunstocks, bludgeons, or stones, but they were none of them dangerous. The things stolen will have bitterly disappointed the expectation of the thieves. The great trunks scarcely contained anything but European clothes and other things that no Arab can use. A number of coloured sketches is most to be regretted, the artistical Sunday amusement of the talented Frey.

We are perfectly aware of the quarter whence this attack originated. We live on the frontier of the territory of Abusir, an Arab village long bearing but a doubtful reputation, between Kafr-el-Batran, at the foot of the pyramids of Gizeh and Saqâra. By Arabs (’Arab, pl. ’Urbân) I mean, according to custom, those inhabitants of the land who have settled in the valley of the Nile, at a late period, and have built villages with some show of right. They distinguish themselves very markedly, by their free origin and manlier character, from the Fellahs (Fellah‘, pl. Fellah‘in), those original tillers of the soil, who, by centuries of slavery, have been pressed down and enervated, and who could not withstand the invading Islam. A Bedouin (Bedaui, pl. Bedauîn) is ever the free son of the desert, hovering upon the coasts of the inhabited lands. Along the pyramids, therefore, there are situated a number of Arab villages. To them belong the three places named above. The sheikh of Abusir, a young, handsome, and enterprising man, had a kind of claim, by the reason of our camp lying on his border, to post a number of excellently-paid guards around us. I preferred, however, to withdraw ourselves to the protection of the sheîkh of Saqâra, a mightier man and more to be relied on, whom I had previously known, and to whose district the larger portion of the scene of our labours belonged. This determination cost the people of Abusir a service, and us their friendship, as I had already observed for some time without troubling myself further about it. Evidently, they had now taken advantage of my absence in Cairo, with several attendants, to carry out this design. To Abusir the traces led through the plain; a little active boy, the grandson of an old Turk of the Mameluke time, the only stranger dwelling in Abusir, with whom we occasionally changed visits, seems to have served as a spy. This boy, who was often in our camp, must have carried out the first robbery, in Abukir’s tent, with which he was well acquainted.

The attack was a serious matter, and a precedent for the future, if it were left unpunished. I immediately went with Herr von Wagner to Sherif Pasha, the minister, in order to discover the thieves.

In a few days the plain beneath our camp wore an animated appearance. The Mudhir (governor) of the province came, with a magnificent train, and a great flock of under-officers and servants, and pitched his varied camp at the foot of the mountain. We interchanged visits of politeness, and conversed upon the event. The Mudhir told me at once that the actual thieves would never be discovered, at least never brought to confession, as each one knew that it would cost him his neck. But the second day the sheikhs of Saqâra and Abusir, with a number of suspected persons, were brought up to be judged. Neither confrontation nor examination succeeded in obtaining any decision, as it was expected. The punishment was therefore summarily executed; one after the other they were shut in the stocks, with their faces down and their soles up, and pitifully beaten, often to fainting, with long whips, called kurwatch, the thongs of which are strips of hippopotamus skin. It was in vain that I represented that I really saw no reason for punishing these persons precisely, and I was still more astonished when our reverend old friend the sheîkh of Saqâra, for whose innocence I had pledged my strongest belief, was led down and laid in the dust like all the others. I expressed my surprise to the Mudhir, and protested seriously against it, but received for answer that the punishment could not be spared him, for though we had not been exactly upon his soil, yet we had received our guides from him, who had run away, and until now had not returned. With much difficulty I obtained a shortening of the proceeding, but he was already scarcely sensible, and he had to be carried to the tent, where his feet were bound up. The whole matter ended with an indemnification in money for the worth of the stolen things, which I purposely estimated at a large sum, as every loss in money remains for years in the memory of the Arab, while he forgets his thrashing, or, indeed, exults in it, when he no longer feels it. “Nezel min e’ semmâ e’ nebût, bárakah min Allah,” say the Arabs, i.e. “Down came the stick from heaven, a blessing of Allah.” Even at the proportioning of the fine, the sum we had asked was so divided that the rich sheikh of Saqâra had to pay a much larger share than he of Abusir, a partiality in which the request of the respected old Turk of Abusir, from the Turkish mudhir, no doubt had its due weight.

As soon as the money was counted out, I went to our sheîkh of Saqâra, whose unmerited ill-fortune seriously discomforted me, and returned him publicly the half of his money, with the confidential assurance that the rest should be restored on the departure of the Mudhir. This was so unexpected on the part of the reverend sheikh, that he long stared at me incredulously, then kissed my hands and feet, and called me his best friend on earth,—I, who had just been at least the indirect cause of his stately beard having been mingled with the dust, and of his feet being beaten into week-enduring pain. His surprised pleasure did not, however, so much have me for its object as the unexpected sight of the money, that never fails in its magical effects on the Arab.

There is in the Arab a remarkable mixture of noble pride and low avarice, which is at first quite incomprehensible to the European. His free, noble carriage and imperturbable rest seem to express nothing but a proud feeling of honour. But against the least prospect of profit this melts like wax in the sun, and the most debasing usage is of no consideration when money is at stake, but is creepingly borne. One of these two natures appears at first to be but apparent or delusive; but the contradiction comes back in every shape, in little things and great, too often not to cause the conviction that it is characteristic of the Arab, if not of the whole cast. The Egyptians had so degenerated already in the Roman æra, that Ammianus Marcellinus could say of them, “Erubescit apud eos, si quis non infitiando tributa plurimas in corpore vibices ostendat;” just in the same way the Fellah to-day points to his red weals with a contented smile as soon as the tax-gatherer had departed, minus a few of his desired piastres, notwithstanding his instruments of torture.[27]

LETTER IX.

Cairo.
April 22, 1843.

A severe cold, which has for some time stopped my usual activity, has brought me hither from our camp near Saqâra. The worst of it is, that we are obliged to postpone our journey, although we should all have liked to quit Saqâra. Certainly everything that such a place offers is of the highest importance; but its wealth almost brings us into a dilemma here. To the most important, but most difficult and time-occupying pursuit, belongs that of Erbkam, our architect. He has the great task allotted him of making the detailed plans of the desert coasts, in about the centre of which we lie. This extent of country embraces the almost unbroken chain of tomb-fields, from the pyramid of Rigah to those of Dahshûr. The single plans of the northern fields of Abu Roash, Gizeh, Zauiet el Arrian, are already completed. The sketches of Perring, useful as they are, cannot be compared with ours. Whole Necropolis, with the pyramids belonging to them, have been discovered, partly by myself, partly by Erbkam. Some of the hitherto unknown pyramids are even now from eighty to a hundred feet in height, others are almost worn away, but were originally of considerable size, as is shown by the extent of their ground plans. My return to Saqâra will, it is to be hoped, be the signal of our departure.

We shall proceed by land to the Faiûm, that province branching into the wilderness. The season of the year is still most beautiful, and the desert journey will no doubt be more conducive to our health than the Nile passage, which we formerly intended.

My health will, it is to be hoped, not long detain me here, for with every day my impatience increases to leave the living city of the Mamelukes, for the solemn Necropolis of the ancient Pharaohs. And yet it might give you more pleasure, perhaps, could I picture to you, in colours or words, how it looks from this my window.

I live on the great place of the Ezbekîeh, in the most handsome and populous part of the city. Formerly there was a large lake in the middle, but it is now transformed into gardens. All around run broad streets, parted off for riders and walkers, and shaded by high trees. There the whole East flits by me with its gay, manifold, and always picturesque forms; the poor with blue or white tucked-up dresses, the rich with long garments of the most various stuffs, with silken kaftans, or fine clothes in delicate broken colours, with white, red, green, or black turbans, or with the noble but little-becoming Turkish tarbush; then Greeks with their dandified fustanellas, or Arabian sheîkhs in their wide, antiquely-draped mantle: the children quite, or half, naked, with shaven heads, from which a single lock stands up on their bare polls like a handle; the women with veiled faces, whose black-rimmed eyes glance ghostly from out the holes cut in the covering. All these and a hundred other indescribable forms go, creep, dash by on foot, on asses, mules, dromedaries, camels, horses, only not in carriages; for they were employed much more in the Pharoahic times than now. If I look upward from the street, I see on one side a prospect of magnificent mosques with their cupolas and slender minarets shooting into the air, with long rows of generally carelessly-built, but now and then richly-ornamented houses, distinguished by artistically-carved lattices, and elegant balconies; on the other side my view is bounded by green palmtrees, or leaf-wealthy sycamores and acacias. In the far back-ground at last, beyond the level roofs and their green interruptions, there come forth on the Libyan horizon the far-lighting sister-pair of the two great pyramids, sunny amidst the fine æther in sharply-broken lines. What a difference to the mongrel Alexandria, where the oriental nature of the country and the mightily progressed culture of Europe still strive for the mastery. It seems to me as if I had already penetrated to the inmost heart of the East of the present.

LETTER X.

At the Ruins of the Labyrinth.
May 31, 1843.

After my return to the camp at Saqâra, I required but three days to finish our labours there. I made a last visit to the ruins of ancient Memphis, the plan of which had, meanwhile, been completed by Erbkam; a few interesting discoveries closed our examination.

On the 19th of May we at length departed with twenty camels, two dromedaries, thirteen donkies, and a horse. As I am speaking of camels and dromedaries, it may not be superfluous to remark what is here understood by those terms; for in Europe, an inaccurate, or at least negligent distinction is made between both, which is not known here. We call Camel what the Frenchman names dromadaire, and dromedary (Trampelthier, trampling beast) what he names chameau. The first has one hump, the other two. Thus Dromedaries or chameaux could not be spoken of at all in Egypt, for there are no bi-humped animals, although they occur now and then in single-humped families. In Syria and Farther Asia, there would again be no camels or dromadaires; at least the single-humped animals are very rare. In fact, it is very immaterial, and taken by itself, should hardly warrant the distinction of another species, whether or not the fat hump on the back is divided into two. At the present time the orientals make no distinction between them, and the ancients evidently did the same, for the single-humped animals do not carry more easily than the others, nor do they run faster, nor does the rider sit between the two humps more securely than on one, for these are as entirely built over by the saddle as the single hump. However, a great distinction is made, though not a naturalistic one, between the strong and unwieldy burthen camel, commonly called gémel, and the younger, more active, thoroughly-broken riding camel, which is called heggîn, because the Mekka pilgrims (hágg, pl. heggâg) have a great estimation for good riding animals. An Arab takes it as ill when any one calls his slender, well-bred camel a gémel, as one would feel angry at having one’s thorough-bred horse called a plough-horse or dray-horse. The meaning, indeed, of dromedarius or camelus dromas, χάμηλος δρομάς with the ancients, was nothing more, as the name proves, than a runner, of the lighter, more rideable race.

As the latter are far more expensive, it is often difficult to obtain even a few of the better kind of animals from the Arabs who are bound to produce them; the greater part of our company was obliged to be contented with the usual beasts of burthen; mine was, however, passable, and was at least called heggîn by the Arabs.

I did not await the general break up of the camp, at which our Sheîkh of Saqâra and he of Mitrahinneh were present, but rode forward with Erbkam along the desert. On the way he took the plan of a pyramid with its neighbourhood, that I had remarked on a former occasion. We have now noted in all sixty-seven pyramids, almost twice as many as are found in Perring. The topographical plans of Erbkam are indeed a treasure.

Shortly after sundown we came to the first pyramid of Lisht, where we found our camp already pitched. Next morning I had the caravan broken up early, and stayed behind with Erbkam in order to employ ourselves in the examination and surveying of the two pyramids, somewhat apart from each other, in this alone-standing tomb-field. At 2 o’clock we followed, and arrived about 7 o’clock in the evening at our tents, which were erected on the south side of the stately pyramid of Meidûm. To the pyramid of Illahûn was another short day’s journey, and from hence,[28] through the mouth of the Faiûm, about three hours. We set out very late. I left Erbkam and Ernst Weidenbach behind in order to bring their researches on paper, and rode off with a couple of servants half an hour before the train, in order to reach the labyrinth by another and more interesting way along the Bahr Jussuf, and to fix upon a place for the encampment.

Here we are since the 31st of May, settled at the south side of the pyramid of Mœris, upon the ruins of the labyrinth. That we are fully justified in employing these terms, I was quite sure, as soon as I had surveyed the locality rapidly. I did not think that it would be so easy to determine this.

As soon as Erbkam had measured off a small plan and had committed it to paper, I had workmen got together by the Mudhir of Medînet el Faiûm, the governor of the province, trenches drawn through the ruins and excavations made in four or five places at once; one hundred and eight people were at work to-day: these I allow to encamp for the night on the north side of the pyramid, with the exception of the people of Howara, the nearest village, who return home every night. They have their foremen, and bread is brought to them; they are counted every morning, and paid every evening; each man receives a piastre, about two silver groschens,[29] each child half a one, occasionally thirty paras, (forty go to a piaster) when they were very industrious. The men must each bring a hoe, and a shallow plaited basket, called maktaf. The children, forming by far the greater number, need only come with baskets. The maktafs are filled by the men, and carried away by the children on their heads; this is done in processions, which are kept in strict order and activity by overseers.

Their chief delight, and a considerable strengthener during their daily work, is song. They have certain simple melodies, which at a distance make an almost melancholy impression by reason of their great monotony; but near, they are hardly bearable, by reason of the pitiless duration of the yelling voices that often continue the same tune for hours together. Only the knowledge that by forbearance I assist so many in carrying half the burden of the day, and materially hasten their labours, has ever deterred me from meddling in this, though I am often driven from my tent in despair to seek rest for my ears in some distant sphere of activity. In the performance of the two-lined stanzas, the only change is, that the first line is sung by a single voice, the second by the whole chorus, while every fourth of a bar is marked by a clap of the hands, e.g.

Makûl, in the first line, is more properly only “food,” but it has generally become an expression for dates, as they are the principal food in the hut of the Fellah, and for some indeed is the only food. Another melody, a little more animated, is as follows:—

where the chorus exceptionally sings two notes and not one. But I hardly believe that even these chords are intentional; they run down without knowing it, for it often occurs that single voices sing the same note in different keys without in the least observing the continual discord. The power of joining voices together, in even the simplest harmony, seems to be wholly wanting in the Arab. The artistical music of the most celebrated singers and players, which inexpressibly delights even the most educated Mussulman, consists only of a hundred-wise screaming, restlessly-hurrying melody, the connecting idea of which is utterly untenable to an European ear.[31] And just as little are the musical instruments, when sounding together, used for any other harmonious variations than rhythm produces.

In the night we have eight watchmen, who really do watch, as I often prove to myself by going a nightly round; one of them is always walking up and down upon the walls about our camp, with his gun on his shoulder; for if we have to anticipate an attack at any place, it is here; not on the part of the Arabs, but of the yet more dangerous Bedouins, who inhabit the borders of the desert in many single hordes, not living under great sheîkhs, who might be secured to our interests. On the way from Illahûn hither, we came through a Bedouin camp, the sheîkh of which must have been aware of our approach, as he mounted his horse, rode to meet us, and offered us his services in case we might require them. Some distance further, we met an old man and a girl crying aloud in despair; they threw dust into the air and heaped it upon their heads; when we had come up to them they complained bitterly to us, that just then two Bedouins had robbed them of their only buffalo; indeed, we could see the thieves on horseback in the distance, driving the animal before them into the desert. I was alone with my dragoman and my little donkey groom, ’Auad, an active, dark-brown Berber, and could render them no assistance. Such robberies are not at all rare here. A short time since, one tribe drove away one hundred and twenty camels from another, and not a single one of them has come back yet.

However, we shall probably not be molested, for the judgment of Saqâra is not forgotten, and it is known that we are particularly recommended to the authorities. They were also aware that we carried no gold and silver with us in our heavy trunks, as the Arabs had universally imagined. We are also prepared for every other attack. The most important chests are all together in my tent, and beside my bed at night I always keep a double-barrelled English gun and a brace of pistols. Every evening I clear all away, in order to be prepared for anything, and storms in particular, from which we have suffered much lately, and the violence of which cannot be conceived in Europe. Abeken’s tent fell down upon him three times in the course of one day, and the last time disturbed him from sleep in a rather disagreeable manner. Thus, we are often in continual expectation for whole days and nights that the airy dwelling will fall down upon us at the next gust, and one must be accustomed to this feeling in order to go on quietly working or sleeping.

It would seem as if we were to taste of all the plagues of Egypt; our acquaintance with a flood was made at the great pyramid; then came the locusts, the young broods of which are numberless as the sands of the sea, eating up the green meadows and trees again, and, together with the passing cattle murrain, are almost enough to bring on a famine; after that came the attack, with a daring robbery at the beginning. The plague of fire has not quite failed. By a careless salute, Wild’s tent was set on fire in Saqâra, and was partially burnt while we stood around in the bright sunlight that concealed the conflagration. Now comes the plague of mice, with which we were not formerly acquainted; in my tent they gnaw, play, and whistle, as if they had been at home here all their lives, and quite regardless of my presence. At night they have already run across my bed and face, and yesterday I started terrified from my slumbers, as I suddenly felt the sharp tooth of such a daring guest at my foot. I jumped up angrily and got a light, knocked at every chest and tent-peg, but was only hissed and whistled at anew on my lying down again. Notwithstanding all these annoyances, however, we are in good spirits, and, thank God, they have only threatened us as yet, made us aware of their existence, and not harmed us much.

I have now much lightened the labours of inspecting the attendants and administering many outward labours by having brought an excellent khawass from Cairo. These khawasses, who form a peculiar corps of officers of the Pasha, are in this country a very exclusive and important class of people. Only Turks are admitted into it, and these, by their nationality, have an inborn preponderance over every Arab. There are few nations that possess so much talent for governing as the Turks, whom we often picture to ourselves as half-barbarians, rough and uncultivated in the highest degree. On the contrary, they, nationally, have a species of aristocratic feeling. A most imperturbable quiet, cold bloodedness, reservedness, and energy of will, seem to be peculiar to every Turk, down to the lowest soldier, and they do not fail at first to make a certain impression upon the European. Among the noble Turks, who have all been subject to the most rigid etiquette from childhood, this outward carriage of apparently pre-conceived firmness, this reserved and proud politeness, moving lightly, as it were, in strict forms, is only present in the refined degree. They have an inborn contempt for everything that does not belong to their nation, and seem not to possess any feeling for the natural weight of higher mental culture and civilization which generally makes the most every-day European respected among other nations. Nothing is to be won from the Turk by kindness, consideration, demonstration, or even by irritation; he only looks upon it as weakness. The greatest reserve alone, and the most scrupulous and proud politeness toward the great, or aristocratic usage and categorical commands toward the little, succeed. A Turkish khawass hunts a whole village of Fellahs or Arabs before him, and makes a decided impression upon the yet prouder Bedouins. The Pasha employs this body in delicate missions and trusts throughout the country. They are the principal acting servants of the Pasha and of the governors of the provinces. Every foreign consul also has such a khawass, without whom he scarcely moves a step, because he is his guard of honour, the token and executive of his incontestible authority. When he rides out, the khawass precedes him on horseback, with a great silver staff, and drives the people and animals out of the way with words and blows, and woe be to him that assumes a gesture or even a look of opposition. The Pasha occasionally gives peculiarly-recommended strangers such a guard, with equal authority, and thus we, on our arrival, immediately received a khawass, who was, however, duly troublesome to us during our long stay at Gizeh, and was at last very ungraciously dismissed by me on account of his improper pretensions. On the occasion of the attack at Saqâra, I had another given me by Sherif Pasha; but still he was not the sort of man we wanted, so I have brought a third with us from Cairo, who has answered excellently till now. He takes the whole responsibility of the attendants off me, and manages admirably everything that I have to negotiate with the people and officials. In Europe I judged myself perfectly strong enough to conduct the whole outward affairs of the Expedition; but in this climate one must take another standard of measure. Patience and rest are here as necessary elements of existence as meat and drink.

LETTER XI.

Labyrinth.
June 25, 1843.

From the Labyrinth these lines come to you; not from the doubtful, or, at least, always disputed one, of which I could form no idea from the previous and more than meagre descriptions of those who placed the Labyrinth here, but the clearly-identified Labyrinth of Mœris and the Dodecarchs. There is a mighty knot of chambers still in existence, and in the midst is the great square, where the Aulæ stood, covered with the remains of great monolithic pillars of granite, and others of white, hard limestone, gleaming almost like marble.

I came near to the spot with a certain fear that we should have to seek to confirm the account of the ancients by the geographical position of the place, that every form of its architectural disposition would be wiped away, and that a shapeless heap of ruins would frighten us from every attempt at investigation; instead of this, there were immediately found, on a cursory view of the districts, a number of confused spaces, as well super as subterranean, and the principal mass of the building, which occupied more than a stadium (Strabo),[32] was distinctly to be seen. Where the French expedition had fruitlessly sought for chambers, we find literally hundreds, by and over each other, little, often very small, by larger and great, supported by diminutive pillars, with thresholds and niches, with remains of pillars and single wall slabs, connected together by corridors, so that the descriptions of Herodotus and Strabo are quite confirmed in this respect; at the same time, the idea, never coincided in by myself, of serpentine, cave-like windings, instead of square rooms, is definitely contradicted.

The disposition of the whole is, that three mighty blocks of buildings, of the breadth of 300 feet, surround a square 600 feet in length and 500 in width; the fourth side is bounded by the pyramid lying behind, which is 300 feet square, and therefore does not quite come up to the side wings of the great buildings. A rather modern canal, which may be jumped over, at least at this season of the year, is diagonally drawn through the ruins, cutting right through the most perfectly-preserved of the Labyrinthic rooms, and a part of the square in the centre, which was once divided into courts. Travellers have not wished to wet their feet, and so remained on this side, where the continuation of the wings of the buildings is certainly much concealed by the rubbish mounds; but even from this, the eastern bank, the chambers on the opposite side, and particularly at the southern point, where the walls rise almost 10 feet above the rubbish, and 20 above the level of the ruins, are very easy to be seen, and when viewed from the heights of the pyramid, the regular plan of the whole lies before one like a map. Erbkam has been employed since our arrival in surveying the place, and inserting in the plan every room and wall, however small; the ruins on the other side are therefore much more difficult in the execution of the plan; here it is easier, as there are fewer chambers, but therefore more difficult to be understood with respect to the original structure. The labyrinth of chambers runs along here to the south. The Aulæ lay between this and the northerly pyramid opposite, but almost all traces of them have disappeared. The dimensions of the place alone allow us to suspect that it was divided into two parts by a wall, to which the twelve Aulæ, no longer to be distinguished with certainty, adjoined on both sides, so that their entrances were turned in opposite directions, and had close before them the innumerable chambers of the Labyrinth. Who was, however, the Maros, Mendes, Imandes, who, according to the reports of the Greeks, erected the labyrinth, or rather the pyramid belonging to it, as his monument? In the Royal Lists of Manetho,[33] we find the builder of the labyrinth towards the end of the twelfth dynasty, the last of the Old Empire shortly before the irruption of the Hyksos. The fragments of the mighty pillars and architraves, that we have dug out in the great square of the Aulæ, give us the cartouches of the sixth king of this twelfth dynasty, Amenemha III.; thus is this important question answered in its historical portion.[34] We have also made excavations on the north side of the pyramid, because we may expect to discover the entrance there; that is, however, not yet done. We have obtained an entry into a chamber covered with piles of rubbish that lay before the pyramid, and here we have also found the name of Amenemha several times. The builder and possessor of the pyramid is therefore determined. But the account of Herodotus, that the construction of the Labyrinth was commenced two hundred years before his time by the Dodecarchs, is not yet confuted. In the ruins of the great masses of chambers surrounding the great square, we have discovered no inscriptions. Later excavations may very probably certify to us that this whole building, and also the arrangement of the twelve courts, really fall in the twenty-sixth dynasty of Manetho, so that the original temple of Amenemha was only included in this mighty erection.[35]

So much for the Labyrinth and its Pyramid. The historical determination of the builder of this structure is by far the most important result that we can expect here. Now something about the other wonder of this province, Lake Mœris.

The obscurity in which it was previously involved seems to be removed by a happy discovery that the excellent Linant, the Pasha’s hydraulic engineer, has lately made. Up to this time it was only agreed that the lake lay somewhere in the Faiûm. As there is at the present time in this remarkable half-oasis only a single lake, the Birqet el Qorn, lying in its most distant part, this was of course taken to be Lake Mœris; there appeared to be no other solution to the question. Now its great fame was expressly founded upon the fact that it was artificial (Herodotus says that it was excavated), and of immense utility, filled at the time of the overflow of the Nile, and at low water running off again by the canal, on one side toward the lands of the Faiûm, on the other, in its backward course, it waters the region of Memphis, and yielding a most lucrative fishery at the double sluices near the end of the Faiûm. Of all these qualities, however, to the annoyance of antiquarians and philologers, the Birqet el Qorn did not possess a single one. It is not artificial, but a natural lake, that is partly fed by the water of the Jussuf canal; its utility is as good as non-existent; no fishing-boat enlivens the hard and desert-circled water mirror, as the brackish water contains scarcely any fish, and is not even favourable to the vegetation at the shores; when the Nile is high and there is plenty of water flowing in, it does swell, but it is by far too deep to allow a drop of the water that flows into it to flow out again; the whole province must be buried beneath the floods ere this could find a passage back again to the valley, as the artificially-deepened rock gorge by the Bahr Jussuf, branching from the Nile at a distance of forty miles to the south, lies higher than the whole oase. The niveau of the Birqet el Qorn now lies seventy feet below the point at which the canal flows in, and can never have risen much higher.[36] This is proved by the ruins of ancient temples lying upon its shores. Just as little do the statements tally that inform us that on its shores were situated the Labyrinth and the metropolis Arsinoë, now Medînet el Faiûm. Linant has discovered mighty mile-long dams, of ancient solid construction, which form the boundary between the upper part of the shell-formed convex basin of the Faiûm, and the more remote and less elevated portion. According to him, these could only be intended to restrain an artificially-constructed lake, which, however, since the dams have long since been broken through, lies perfectly dry; this lake he considers to be Mœris. I must confess that the whole, after his personal information, impressed me with the idea that it was a most fortunate discovery, and one that would save us many fruitless researches; and the examination of the region has now quite solved every doubt of mine as to the accuracy of this judgment; I consider it an immoveable fact, Linant’s essay is now being printed, and I will send it as soon as it is to be got.[37]

Should you, however, ask me what then the name of Mœris has to do with that of Amenemha, I can only reply, nothing. The name Mœris occurs in the monuments or in Manetho; I rather imagine that here again is one of the numerous Greek misunderstandings. The Egyptians called the lake Phiom en mere, “the Lake of the Nile flood (Koptic,

, inundatio).” The Greeks made out of mere, the water that formed the lake, a King Mœris, who laid out the lake, and troubled themselves no more about the real originator of it, Amenemha. At a later period, the whole province obtained the name of

, Phiom, the Lake, from which arises the present name Faiûm.

LETTER XII.

Labyrinth.
July 18, 1843.

Our tour in the Faiûm, this remarkable province so seldom visited by Europeans, which may be called the garden of Egypt by reason of its fertility, is now ended; and as these regions are almost as unknown as the distant Libyan oases, it may be pleasing to you to hear something more about this from me.

I set out on the 3rd of July, in company with Erbkam, Ernst Weidenbach, and Abeken; from the Labyrinth we followed the Bahr Wardâni, which traverses the eastern boundary of the desert, and marks the frontier to which the shores of Lake Mœris once extended. Now the canal is dry, and its place is taken by the still more modern Bahr Sherkîeh, which, it is said, was the work of Sultan Barquq, and leads through the middle of the Labyrinth, crosses and recrosses the Wardâni, but then keeps more inland. In three hours we arrived at the place where the monster dam of Mœris, from the middle of the Faiûm, touches the desert. It runs from there in a direct line for one and a half geographical miles to El Elâm; in the middle of this course it is interrupted by the Bahr bela-mâ, a deep river bed, which now passes through the old lake bottom, and is generally dry, but is used at a great inundation to draw off the surplus toward Tamîeh and into the Birqet el Qorn. This gave us the advantage of being able to examine more closely the dyke itself. The occasionally high-swelling and tearing stream has not only penetrated the disturbed bed of the lake, but also several other strata, and even the lowest, crumbling limestone, so that the water now flows during the dryest season of the year, at sixty feet below the now dry surface. I measured the single strata carefully, and brought away a specimen of each. The breadth of the embankment cannot be exactly given, but was probably 150 feet. Its height has probably decreased in the lapse of time. I found 1 m. 90. above the present basin, and 5 m. 60. above the opposite surface. If we take that to be of an equal height with the original lake bottom (which, however, appears to have been deeper, because the outer region was watered, and was therefore made higher), the former height of the embankment, its gradual declension not being considered, would have been 5 m. 60., i. e. 17 feet, and the bottom of the lake would thus have been raised by the sediment about 11 feet in its existence of 2,000 years. But if we take for granted that the 11 or 12 feet of black earth were deposited in historical times, the above amounts would be almost double. Thus it may be understood how it is that its usefulness is so much, diminished, for, by the deposit of 11 feet, the lake lost (if we accept Linant’s statement as to its circumference) about 13,000,000,000 square feet of water, which it could formerly contain. Raising the dykes would not, it may be readily understood, have counteracted it, because they had already been put into the proper connection with the point of entrance of the Bahr Jussuf into the Faiûm. This may have been one of the most cogent reasons for the neglect into which Lake Mœris had been permitted to fall, and even if Linant had the Bahr Jussuf turned off much higher from the Nile than the ancient Pharaohs found it good, his daring project of restoring the lake again would not completely succeed.

In two hours and a half from this breach, we arrived by El Elâm, where the dam ends, at the remarkable ruins of the two monuments of Biahmu, which Linant considers to be the two pyramids of Mœris and his wife, mentioned by Herodotus as seen in the lake. They are built up of massive blocks; there is yet a heart existing of each of them, but not in the middle of the square rectangles, which appear as if they had been originally quite filled by them. They rose in an angle of 64°, therefore much more steeply than pyramids usually do. Their present height is only twenty-three feet, to which must be added, however, a protruding base of seven feet. A slight excavation convinced me, that the undermost layer of stone, which only reaches four feet below the present surface of the ground, is neither founded upon sand or rock, but upon Nile-earth, by which the high antiquity of this structure is much to be doubted. At least this proved that they did not stand in the Lake, which must have had a considerable bend to the north-west if it included them.

Up to this time we had ridden along the boundary of the ancient lake, and the adjoining region. This was bare and unfruitful, because the land now lies so high, that it cannot be inundated. The land, however, immediately enclosing the old lake, forms by far the most beautiful and fertile part of the Faiûm. This we now traversed, leaving the metropolis of the province, Medînet el Faiûm, with the hills of ancient Crocodilopolis, to our left, and riding by Selajîn and Fidimîn to Agamîeh, where we staid for the night. Next morning we arrived by way of Bisheh on the frontier of the uninterrupted garden land. Here we entered a new region, particularly striking by its unfertility and desolateness, which lies round the other like a girdle, and separates it from the deepest, and most distant, crescent-shaped Birqet el Qorn. About noon we reached the lake. The only bark we could possibly find here, carried us in an hour and a half over the waters, surrounded on all sides by desert, to an island in the middle of the lake, called Gezîret el Qorn. However, we found nothing remarkable upon it, not a single trace of building: towards evening we returned back again.

On the following morning, we cruized in a more northerly direction across the lake, and landed on a little peninsula on the opposite side, that rises immediately to a plateau of the Libyan desert, one hundred and fifty feet high, commanding the whole oasis. Thither we ascended and found, about an hour distant from the shores, in the middle of the inhospitable water and barren desert, the extended ruins of an ancient city, which is called in earlier maps Medînet Nimrud. Of this name no one knew anything; the place was known as Diméh. Next morning, the 7th of July, the regular plan of these ruins, with the remains of their temple was made by Erbkam, who had stopped the night here with Abeken. The temple bears no inscription, and what we found of sculptures point to the late origin of this remarkable site. Its purpose can only have been a military station against Libyan incursions into the rich Faiûm.

On the 8th of July we went in our boat to Qasr Qerûn, an old city at the southern end of the lake, with a temple, in excellent preservation, but bearing no inscriptions of recent date, the plan of which was taken next day. Hence we pursued the southern boundary of the oasis by Neslet, to the ruins of Medînet Mâdi at lake Gharaq, in the neighbourhood of which the old embankments of Lake Mœris run down from the north, and we arrived in our camp at the ruins of the labyrinth, on the 11th of July. We found all well except our Frey, whom we had left indisposed, and whose recurring, seemingly climatic, illness gives me some pain.

To-morrow I am thinking of going to Cairo, with Abeken and Bonomi, to hire a bark for our journey to the south, and to prepare everything required by our final departure from the neighbourhood of the metropolis. We shall take four camels with us, for the transport of the monuments gathered in the Faiûm, and go the shortest way, by Tamiêh, which we did not touch on our tour, and thence over the desert heights, which divide this part of the Faiûm from the valley of the Nile. We shall enter this by the pyramids of Dahshur. Thus we expect to reach Cairo in two days and a half.

LETTER XIII.

Cairo.
August 14, 1843.

Unfortunately, I received, soon after our return to Cairo, such very questionable news of Frey’s health, that Abeken and Bonomi have determined to go to the camp and bring him, in a litter they took with them, from the Labyrinth to Zani, on the Nile, and thence by water hither. As soon as Dr. Pruner had seen him, he declared that the only advisable course was to let him depart immediately for Europe. Disease of the liver, in the way it developed itself in him, is incurable in Egypt. So he left us yesterday at noon. May the climate of his native land soon restore the powers of a friend, equally talented as estimable, in whom we all lose much.

A few days ago I purchased from a Basque named Domingo Lorda, who has stayed a long time in Abyssinia, and has since accompanied d’Abadie in several journeys, some Ethiopic Manuscripts for the Berlin Museum. He bought them, probably at an inconsiderable price, in a convent on the island of Thâna, near Gorata, a day’s journey from the sources of the Blue Nile, where the inhabitants had been put to fearful distress by the locusts. One contains the history of Abyssinia from Solomon to Christ, is reported to come from Axum, and to be 500 or 600 years old! This first portion of Abyssinian history, named Kebre Negesty, “The Fame of the Kings,” is said to be far rarer than the second, Tarik Negest, “The History of the Kings;” but this manuscript contains at the end a list of the Ethiopian kings since Christ. The largest manuscript, with many pictures ornamented in the Byzantine style, and, according to what Lieder tells me, almost unique in its kind, contains mostly lives of Saints. In the third, the yet valid Canones of the church are completely preserved. I hope the purchase will be welcome to our library.[38]

Now, too, are our purchases for the voyage ended; a comfortable bark is hired, and will save us the great difficulties of a land journey, which is scarcely possible during the coming season of inundation.

LETTER XIV.

Thebes.
October 13, 1843.

On the 16th of August, I went from Cairo to the Faiûm, where our camp was broken up on the 21st. Two days later we sailed from Benisuef, sent the camels back to Cairo, and only took the donkeys with us, as it was found, upon careful consideration, that the originally-intended land journey by the foot of the mountains, far away from the river, was altogether impossible during the season of the inundation, and, on the eastern side, it was not only too difficult, but perfectly useless for us, by reason of the proximity of the desert, towards which there is nothing more to be found for our purposes. We have therefore made excursions from our bark, on foot, and with donkeys, principally to the east and some attainable mountains, though we have also visited the most important spots on the western shore.

Even on the day of our departure from Benisuef, we found, in the neighbourhood of the village of Surarîeh, a small rock temple, not mentioned by former travellers, indeed, not even by Wilkinson, which was dedicated already in the nineteenth dynasty of Menephthes, the son of Ramses Miamun,[39] to Hathor, the Egyptian Venus.[40] Farther on, lie several groups of graves, which have scarcely received any attention, although they are of peculiar interest by reason of their great antiquity. The whole of middle Egypt, to judge from the tombs preserved, flourished during the Old Empire, before the irruption of the Hyksos, not only under the twelfth dynasty,[41] to which period the famous tombs of Benihassan suit, and Bersheh belong, but even under the sixth dynasty[42] we have found extensive series of tombs, belonging to these early times, and attached to cities, of which the later Egyptian geography does not even know the names, as they were probably already destroyed by the Hyksos. In Benihassan we stayed the longest time—sixteen days; through this, the season is far advanced, and it must not be lost in our journey southward. At the next places, therefore, only notes were taken, and the most important forms in paper, so also at El Amarna, Siut, at the reverend Abydos, and in the younger, but not less magnificent, almost intactly preserved, temple of Dendera. At Siut, we visited the governor of Upper Egypt, Selim Pasha, who is working an ancient alabaster quarry between Bersheh and Gauâta, discovered by the Bedouins some months ago.

The town of Siut is well built and charmingly situated, particularly if it be looked upon from the steep rocks of the western shore. The prospect of the inundated Nile valley from these heights is the most beautiful that we have yet seen, and is very peculiar in these times of inundation in which we travel. From the foot of the abrupt rock, a small dyke, overgrown with vines, and a bridge leads to the town, which lies like an island in the boundless ocean of inundation. The gardens, of Ibrahim Pasha, to the left, form another island, green and fresh with trees and bushes. The city, with its fifteen minarets, rises high upon the ruined mounds of ancient Lycopolis; from it a great embankment reaches to the Nile; toward the south may be seen other long dykes stretching through the waters like threads; on the other side, the Arabian mountains come on closely, by which the valley is bounded, and formed into an easily-overlooked picture.

Since the 6th of October we have been in Royal Thebes. Our bark touched the shore first beneath the wall of Luqsor, at the southerly point of the Thebaïc ruins. The strong current of the river has thrust itself so near to the old temple, that it is in great danger. I endeavoured to obtain a general view of the ruins of Thebes from the heights of the temple, in order to compare it with the picture I had idealised to myself, from plans and descriptions.

But the distances are too great to give a complete view. One looks into a wide landscape, in which the temple groups are distinguishable only to those who are acquainted with the neighbourhood. To the north, at a short hour’s distance stand the mighty pylones of Karnak, forming a temple city in itself, gigantic and astounding in all its proportions. We spent the next days in a cursory examination of it. Across the river, at the foot of the Libyan mountains, lie the Memnonia, once an unbroken series of palaces, which probably found their equal nowhere in antiquity. Even now, the temples of Medînet Hâbu, at the southern end of this row, show themselves, with their high rubbish-mounds at a distance, and at the northern end, an hour away down the river, is the well-preserved temple of Qurnah; between both lies the temple of Ramses Miamun,[43] (Sesostris), already most celebrated by the description of Diodorus. Thus the four Arab villages, Karnak and Luqsor on the east, Qurnah and Medînet Hâbu on the west of the river, form a great quadrangle, each side of which measures about half a geographical mile, and gives us some idea of the dimensions of the most magnificent part of ancient Thebes. How far the remainder of the inhabited portion of the hundred-gated city extended beyond these limits to the east, north, and south, is difficult to be discovered now, because everything that did not remain upright in the lapse of ages gradually disappeared under the annually rising soil of the valley, induced by the alluvial deposit.

No one ever asks after the weather here; for every day is pleasant, clear, and up to the present time not too hot. We have no red either in the morning or at night, as clouds and mists fail. But every first beam of the day calls a thousand colours forth from the naked and precipitate limestone rocks, and the brown shining desert, in opposition to the black or green-clad plain of the valley. A dawn scarcely exists, as the sun sinks directly down. The boundary between day and night is as sudden as that between meadow and desert; one step, one moment, parts the one from the other. The more refreshing, therefore, is the darkly sheen of the moon and star-bright night to the eye, dazzled by the light ocean of the day. The air is so pure and dry, that no dew falls, except in the immediate vicinity of the river, notwithstanding the sudden change at sundown. We have almost forgotten what rain is, for, as far as we are concerned, it is six months since it last rained at Saqâra. A few days ago, we were rejoicing at having discovered toward evening some light clouds in the south-western part of the sky, which reminded us of Europe. However, we are not in want of cooling, for a light wind is almost always blowing, which does not allow the heat to become too oppressive. Besides this, the water of the Nile is of a sweet taste, and can be taken in great quantities without danger.

An inestimable benefit are the earthenware water-vessels (Qulleh), which, formed of a fine, porous Nile earth, allow the water to continually filter through. This evaporates as soon as it comes out to the warm surface, the evaporation produces cold, as is well known, and, by this simple process, the bottles are kept constantly cool, even in the warmest days. The water is therefore generally cooler than it is to be had in Europe during summer. Our food usually consists mostly of fowls; as a change, we kill a sheep from time to time. There is but little vegetable. Every meal is ended with a dish of rice, and as a desert, we have the most excellent yellow melons, or juicy red water-melons. The dates are also excellent, but are, however, not always to be obtained. I have at length agreed, to the great joy of my companions, to smoke a Turkish pipe; this keeps me for a quarter of an hour in perfect kêf (so the Arabs call their state of perfect rest), for as long as one “drinks” from the blue pipe with the long, easily-spilt bowl, it is impossible to leave one’s place, and begin any other business. Our costume is comfortable: full trowsers of light cotton, and a wide, long blouse, with short falling sleeves. I wear, also, a broad-brimmed, grey felt hat, as a European symbol, which keeps the Arabs in proper respect. We eat, according to the custom of the country, sitting with crossed legs on cushions, round a low, round table, not a foot high. This position has become so comfortable to me, that I even write in it, sitting on my bed, with my letter case upon my knees. Above me a canopy of gauze is spread, in order to keep off the flies, these most shameless of the plagues of Egypt, during the day, and the mosquitos at night. For the rest, one does not suffer so much from insects here as in Italy. Scorpions and serpents have not bitten us yet, but there are very malicious wasps, which have often stung us.

We shall only stop here till the day after to-morrow, and then journey away to the southward without stopping. On our return, we shall give the treasures here as much time and exertion as they require. At Assuan, on the Egyptian frontier, we must unload for the first time, and send back our large bark, in which we have become quite homeish. On the other side of the cataracts we shall take two smaller barks for the continuation of our journey.

LETTER XV.

Korusko.
November 20, 1843.[44]

Our journey from the Faiûm through Egypt was obliged to be much hastened on account of the advanced season of the year; we have, therefore, seldom stopped at any place longer than was necessary to make a hasty survey of it, and have confined ourselves in the last three months to a careful examination of what we have, and to extending our important collection of paper impressions of the most interesting inscriptions.

We have obtained, in our rapid journey to Wadi Halfa, three or four hundred Greek inscriptions, in impressions or careful transcripts. They often confirm Letronne’s acute conjectures, but not seldom correct the unavoidable mistakes incident to such an investigation as his. In the inscription from which it was, without reason, attempted to settle the situation of the city of Akoris, his conjecture ΙΣΙΔΙ ΛΟΧΙΑΔΙ is not corroborated; L’Hote has read ΜΟΧΙΑΔΙ but ΜΩΧΙΑΔΙ is to be found there, and previously ΕΡΩΕΩΕ not ΕΡΕΕΩΕ.

The dedicatory inscription of the temple of Pselchis (as the inscriptions give with Strabo, instead of Pselcis) is almost as long again as Letronne considers it, and the first line does not end with KΛEOPATPAΣ, but with AΔEΛΦHΣ, so that it should probably be supplied—

Ὑπὲρ βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου καὶ βασιλίσσης
Κλεοπάτρας τῆς ἀδελφῆς
θεῶν Εὐεργετῶν ...;[45]

At the end of the second line ΤΩΙΚΑΙ is confirmed; the title of Hermes, following in the third line, was, however, ΠΑΟΤΠΝΟΥΦΙ(ΔΙ), varying from the spelling in other subsequent inscriptions, where he is called ΠΑΥΤΝΟΥΦΙΣ. The same name is found not unfrequently hieroglyphically, and is then Tut en Pnubs, i. e. Thoth of, or lord of Πνούψ[46], a city, the position of which is yet obscure. I have already encountered this Thoth in earlier temples, where he often appears besides the Thoth of Shonun, i. e. Heliopolis magna. In the language of the people it was pronounced Pet-Pnubs, whence Paot-Pnuphis.

The interesting problem concerning the owner of the name Εὐπάτωρ, which Letronne endeavoured to solve in a new way in connection with the inscriptions of the obelisk of Philae, seems to be determined by the hieroglyphical inscriptions, where the same circumstances occur, but lead to other conclusions.[47] I have discovered several very perfect series of Ptolemies, the longest coming down to Neos Dionysos and his wife Cleopatra, who was surnamed Tryphæna by the Egyptians, according to the hieroglyphic inscriptions.[48] A fact of some importance is also that in this Egyptian list of Ptolemies, the first King is never Ptolemæus Soter I. but Philadelphus. In Qurna, where Euergetes II. is adoring his ancestors, not only Philometor, the brother of Euergetes, is wanting, which may easily be accounted for, but also Soter I., and it is an error of Rosselini, if he look upon the king beneath Philadelphus as Soter I. instead of Euergetes I. It seems that the son of Lagus, although he assumed the title of King from 305 B.C., was not recognized by the Egyptians as such, as his cartouches do not appear upon any monument erected by him. The rather, therefore, do I rejoice, that I have not yet found his name once upon an inscription of Philadelphus, as the father of Arsinoe II. But here, it must be observed, Soter certainly has the Royal Kings about his names, and a peculiar cartouche; but before both cartouches, contrary to the usual Egyptian custom, there stands no royal title, although his daughter is called “royal daughter,” and “Queen.”[49]

It is remarkable how little Champollion seems to have attended to the monuments of the Old Empire. In his whole journey through Middle Egypt up to Dendera, he only found the rock graves of Benihassan worthy of remark, and these, too, he assigns to the sixteenth and seventeenth dynasty, therefore to the New Empire. He mentions Zauiet el Meitîn and Siut, but scarcely makes any remark about them.

So little has been said by others of most of the monuments of Middle Egypt, that almost everything was new to me that we found here. My astonishment was not small, when we found a series of nineteen rock tombs at Zauiet el Meitîn, which were all inscribed, gave the names of the departed, and belong to the old time of the sixth dynasty, thus almost as far back as the pyramid builders.[50] Five of them contain, several times repeated, the cartouche of the Macrobiote Apappus-Pepi, who is reported to have lived one hundred and six years, and reigned one hundred; in another, Cheops is mentioned. On one side is a single tomb, of the time of Ramses.

At Benihassan I have had a complete rocktomb perfectly copied; it will serve as a specimen of the grandiose style of architecture and art of the second flourishing time of the Old Empire, during the mighty twelfth dynasty.[51] I think it will cause some surprise among Egyptologers, when they learn from Bunsen’s work,[52] why I have divided the tablet of Abydos, and have referred Sesurtesen and Amenemha, these Pharaohs, well known through Heliopolis, the Faiûm, Benihassan, Thebes, and up to Wadi Halfa, from the New Empire into the Old. It must then have been a proud period for Egypt—that is proved by these mighty tombs alone. It is interesting, likewise, to trace in the rich representations on the walls, which put before our eyes the high advance of the peaceful arts, as well as the refined luxury of the great of that period; also the foreboding of that great misfortune which brought Egypt, for several centuries, under the rule of its northern enemies. In the representations of the warlike games, which form a characteristically recurring feature, and take up whole sides in some tombs, which leads to a conclusion of their general use at that period afterwards disappearing, we often find among the red or dark-brown men, of the Egyptian and southern races, very light-coloured people, who have, for the most part, a totally different costume, and generally red-coloured hair on the head and beard, and blue eyes, sometimes appearing alone, sometimes in small divisions. They also appear in the trains of the nobles, and are evidently of northern, probably Semitic, origin. We find victories over the Ethiopians and negroes on the monuments of those times, and therefore need not be surprised at the recurrence of black slaves and servants. Of wars against the northern neighbours we learn nothing; but it seems that the immigration from the north-east was already beginning, and that many foreigners sought an asylum in fertile Egypt in return for service and other useful employments.

I have more in mind the remarkable scene in the tomb of the royal relation, Nehera-si-Numhotep, the second from the north, which places the immigration of Jacob and his family before our eyes in a most lively manner, and which would almost induce us to connect the two, if Jacob had not really entered at a far later period, and if we were not aware that such immigrations of single families could not be unfrequent. These, however, were the precursors of the Hyksos, and prepared the way for them in more than one respect. I have traced the whole representation, which is about eight feet long, and one-and-a-half high, and is very well preserved through, as it is only painted. The Royal Scribe, Nefruhotep, who conducts the company into the presence of the high officer to whom the grave belongs, is presenting him a leaf of papyrus. Upon this the sixth year of King Sesurtesen II. is mentioned, in which that family of thirty-seven persons came to Egypt. Their chief and lord was named Absha, they themselves Aama, a national designation, recurring with the light-complexioned race, often represented in the royal tombs of the nineteenth dynasty, together with three other races, and forming the four principal divisions of mankind, with which the Egyptians were acquainted. Champollion took them for Greeks when he was in Benihassan, but he was not then aware of the extreme antiquity of the monuments before him. Wilkinson considers them prisoners, but this is confuted by their appearance with arms and lyres, with wives, children, donkeys and luggage; I hold them to be an immigrating Hyksos-family, which begs for a reception into the favoured land, and whose posterity perhaps opened the gates of Egypt to the conquering tribes of their Semetic relations.

The city to which the rich rock-Necropolis of Benihassan belonged, and which is named Nus in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, must have been very considerable, and without doubt lay opposite on the left bank of the Nile, where old mounds are still existing, and were marked on the French maps. That the geography of the Greeks and Romans knows nothing of this city, Nus, as indeed was true of many other cities of the Old Empire, is not very astonishing, if it be considered that the five hundred years of Hyksos dominion intervened. The sudden fall of the Empire and of this flourishing city, at the end of the twelfth dynasty, is recognised by some in the circumstance, that of the numerous rock-tombs, only eleven bear inscriptions, and of these but three are completely finished. To these last, broad pathways led directly up from the banks of the river, which, at the steep upper end, were changed into steps.

Benihassan is, however, not the only place where works of the twelfth dynasty were found. Near Bersheh, somewhat to the south of the great plain, in which the Emperor Hadrian built, to the honour of his drowned favourite, the city of Antinoe, with its magnificently and even now partially passable streets, with hundreds of pillars, a small valley opens to the east, where we again found a series of splendidly-made rock-tombs of the twelfth dynasty, of which the greater portion are unfortunately injured. In the tomb of Ki-si-Tuthotep the transportation of the great colossus is represented, which was already published by Rosellini, but without the accompanying inscriptions; from the latter it is certain that it was formed of limestone (the hieroglyphic word for which I first ascertained here), and was about thirteen Egyptian ells, that is circa twenty-one feet, in height.[53] In the same valley, on the southern rock wall, there is hewn a series of still older, but very little inscribed tombs, which, to judge from the style of the hieroglyphics, and the titles of the deceased, belong to the sixth dynasty.

A few hours more to the southward comes another group of graves, also belonging to the sixth dynasty; here King Cheops is incidentally mentioned, whose name already appeared several times in an hieratic inscription at Benihassan. At two other places, between the valley of El Amarna, where the very remarkable rock-tombs of King Bech-en-Aten is situated, and Siut, we found graves of the sixth dynasty, but presenting few inscriptions. Perring, the pyramid measurer, has, in a recent publication, attempted to establish the strange notion, which I found also existed in Cairo, that the monuments of El Amarna were the work of the Hyksos: others wished to refer them to a period anterior to that of Menes, by reason of their certainly, but not inexplicable, peculiarities; I had already explained them in Europe as contemporaneous kings[54] of the eighteenth dynasty.

In the rock wall behind Siut, mighty tombs are gaping, in which we could recognize the grand style of the twelfth dynasty already from a distance. Here too, unfortunately, much has been lately destroyed of these precious remnants, as it was found easier to break down the walls and pillars of the grottoes, than to hew out the stones from the mass.

I learnt from Selim Pasha, the Governor of Upper Egypt, who received us at Siut in the most friendly manner, that the Bedouins had some time since discovered quarries of alabaster two or three hours’ journey into the eastern mountains, the proceeds of which Mahommed Ali had presented him, and from his dragoman I ascertained that there was an inscription on the rocks. I therefore determined to undertake the hot ride upon the Pasha’s horses, which he had sent to El Bosra for this purpose, from El Bosra thither, in company with the two Weidenbachs, our dragoman and the khawass. There we found a little colony of eighteen workmen, with their families, altogether thirty-one persons, in the lonely, wild, hot rock gorge, employed in the excavation of the alabaster. Behind the tent of the overseer there were preserved, in legible, sharply-cut hieroglyphics, the names and titles of the wife, so much revered by the Egyptians, of the first Amasis, the head of the eighteenth dynasty, who expelled the Hyksos, the remains of a formerly much larger inscription. These are the first alabaster quarries, the age of which is certified by an inscription. Not far from the place were others, which were already exhausted in antiquity; from those now reopened they have extracted within the last four months more than three hundred blocks, of which the larger ones are eighty feet long and two feet thick. The Pasha informed me, through his dragoman, that on our return I should find a piece, the size and form of which I was myself to determine, of the best quality the quarry afforded, which he desired me to accept as a testimonial of his joy at our visit. The alabaster quarries discovered in this region are all situated between Bersheh and Gauâta; one would be inclined, therefore, to consider El Bosra as the ancient Alabastron, if its position could be reconciled with the account of Ptolemæus; at any rate, Alabastron has certainly nothing to do with the ruins in the valley of El Amarna, as hitherto thought, to which also the relation of Ptolemæus does not answer, and which seems to be quite different. The hieroglyphical name of these ruins recurs continually in the inscriptions.

In the rock chains of Gebel Selîn there are again very early, but little inscribed, graves of the Old Empire, apparently of the sixth dynasty.

Opposite ancient Panopolis, or Chemmis, we climbed the remarkable rock cave of the ithyphallic Pan (Chem).[55] It is dedicated by another contemporaneous king of the eighteenth dynasty, whose grave we have since visited in Thebes. The holy name of the city often occurs in the inscriptions,—“Dwelling-place of Chem,” i. e. Panopolis. Whether this, however, was the origin of the popular name, Chemmis, now Echmîn, is much to be doubted. I have always found at Siut, Dendera, Abydos, and other have cities, two distinct names, the sacred one and the popular name; the first is taken from the principal god of the local temple, the other has nothing to do with it.[56] My hieroglyphical geography is extended almost with every new monument.

At Abydos we came to the first greater temple building. The last interesting tombs of the Old Empire we found at Qasr e’ Saiât; they belong to the sixth dynasty. At Dendera we visited the imposing temple of Hathor, the best preserved perhaps in all Egypt.[57]

In Thebes we stayed for twelve over-rich, astonishing days, which were hardly sufficient to learn to find our way among the palaces, temples, and tombs, whose royal giant magnificence fills this spacious plain. In the jewel of all Egyptian buildings, in the palace of Ramses Sesostris, which this greatest of the Pharaohs erected in a manner worthy of himself and the god, to “Ammon-Ra, King of the Gods,” the guardian of the royal city of Ammon, on a gently-rising terrace, calculated to overlook the wide plain on this side, and on the other side of the majestic river, we kept our beloved King’s birthday with salutes and flags, with chorus singing, and with hearty toasts, that we proclaimed over a glass of pure German Rhine wine. That we thought of you with full hearts on this occasion I need not say. When night came we first lighted a pitch kettle, over the outer entrances between the pylones, on both sides of which our flags were planted; then we let a green fire flame up from the roof of the Pronaos, which threw out the beautiful proportions of the pillared halls, now first restored to their original destination by us, as festal halls; “Hall of the Panegyries,” ever since thousands of years; and even magically animated the two mighty peace thrones of the colossi of the Memnon.

We have put off more extensive research till our return; but to select from the inexhaustible matter for our end, and with relation to what has already been given in other works, will be difficult. On the 18th of October we quitted Thebes. Hermonthis we saw en passant. The great hall of Esneh was some years ago excavated by command of the Pasha, and presented a magnificent appearance. At El Kab, the ancient Eileithyia, we remained three days. Still more remarkable than the different temples of this once mighty place are its rock-tombs, which belong chiefly to the beginning of the War of Liberation against the Hyksos, and throw much light upon the relation of the several dynasties of that period. Several persons of consideration buried there bear the curious title of a male nurse of a royal prince, expressed by the well known group of mena, with the determinative of the female breast in Coptic,

;[58] the deceased is represented with the prince in his lap.

The temple of Edfu is also among the best preserved of them; it was dedicated to Horus and Hathor, the Egyptian Venus, who is once named here “Queen of men and women.” Horus, as a child, is represented, as all children are on the monuments, as naked, with his finger to his lips; I had already explained from it the name of Harpocrates, which I have now found completely represented and written as Harpe-chroti, i. e. “Horus the Child.”[59] The Romans misunderstood the Egyptian gesture of the finger, and made of the child that can not speak, the God of Silence, that will not speak. The most interesting inscription, unremarked and unmentioned as yet by any one, is found on the eastern outer wall of the temple, built by Ptolemaeus Alexander I. It contains several dates of King Darius, of Nectanebus, and the falsely named Amyrtæus, and has reference to the lands belonging to the temple. The glowing heat of that day caused me to postpone the more careful examination and the paper impression of this inscription till our return.[60] Gebel Silsilis is one of the richest places in historical inscriptions, which generally bear some reference to the ancient working of the sandstone quarries.

At Ombos, I was greatly rejoiced to discover a third canon of proportions of the human body, which is very different to the two older Egyptian canons that I had found in many examples before. The second canon is intimately connected with the first and oldest of the pyramid period, of which it is only a farther completion and different application. The foot is the unit of both of them, which, taken six times, makes the height of the upright body; but it must be remarked, not from the sole to the crown, but only as far as the forehead. The piece from the roots of the hair, or the forehead to the crown, did not come into the calculation at all, and occupies sometimes three-quarters, sometimes half, sometimes less of another square. The difference between the first and second canons concerns mostly the position of the knees. In the Ptolemaic canon, however, the division itself is altered. The body was not divided into 18 parts, as in the second canon, but into 21¼ parts to the forehead, or into 23 to the crown. This is the division which Diodorus gives us in the last chapter of his first book. The middle, between forehead and sole, falls beneath the hips in all the three divisions. Thence downward, the proportions of the second and third canons remain the same, but those of the upper part of the body differ exceedingly; the head is larger, the breast falls deeper, the abdomen higher; on the whole, the contour becomes more licentious, and loses the earlier simplicity and modesty of form, in which the grand and peculiar Egyptian character consisted, for the imperfect imitation of a misunderstood foreign style of art. The proportion of the foot to the length of the body remains, but it is no longer the unit on which the whole calculation is based.

We were obliged to change boat at Assuan, on account of the Cataracts, and had, for the first time for six months or more, the homeish greeting of a violent shower and blustering storm, that gathered beyond the Cataracts, surmounted the granite girdle, and burst with the most thundering explosions into the valley down to Cairo, which (as we have since learnt) it deluged with water in a manner scarcely recollected before. Thus we too may say with Strabo and Champollion:—“In our time it rained in Upper Egypt.” Rain is, in fact, so unusual here, that our guards remembered no similar scene, and our Turkish Khawass, who is intimately acquainted with the land in every respect, when we had long had our packages brought into the tents and fastened up, never laid a hand to his own things, but quietly repeated, abaden moie, “never rain,” a word, that he had since been often obliged to hear, as he was thoroughly drenched, and got a tremendous fever, that he was obliged to suffer patiently at Philae.

Philae is as charmingly situated as it is interesting for its monuments. The week spent on this holy island belongs to the most delightful reminiscences of our journey. We were accustomed to assemble before dinner, when our scattered work was done, on the elevated terrace of the temple, which rises steeply above the river on the eastern shore of the island, to observe the shades of the well-preserved temple, built of sharply-cut, dark-glowing blocks of sandstone, which grow across the river and mingle with the black volcanic masses of rock, piled wildly one upon another, and between which the golden-hued sand pours into the valley like fire-floods. The island appears to have become sacred at a late period among the Egyptians, under the Ptolemies. Herodotus, who went up to the Cataracts in the time of the Persians, does not mention Philae at all; it was then inhabited by Ethiopians, who had also half Elephantine in their possession. The oldest buildings, now to be found on the island, were erected nearly a hundred years subsequent to the journey of Herodotus, by King Nectanebus, the last but three of the kings of Egyptian descent, upon the southern point of the island. There is no trace of any earlier buildings, not even of destroyed or built-up remains. Inscriptions of much older date are to be found on the great island of Bigeh close by, called hieroglyphically Senmut. It was already adorned with Egyptian monuments during the Old Empire; for we found there a granite statue of King Sesurtesem III., of the twelfth dynasty. The little rock-islet Konossa, hieroglyphically Kenes, has also very ancient inscriptions on the rocks, in which a new, and hitherto quite unknown, king of the Hyksos period is named. The hieroglyphical name of the island of Philae has generally been read Manlak. I have found it several times undoubtedly written Ilak. This, with the article, becomes Philak, in the mouths of the Greeks Philai. The sign read “man” by Champollion also interchanges in other groups with “i,” thus the pronunciation I-lak, P-i-lak, Memphitic Ph-i-lak is confirmed.

We have made a precious discovery in the court of the great temple of Isis, two somewhat word-rich bilingual, i. e. hieroglyphical and Demotic decrees of the Egyptian priests, of which one contains the same text as the decree of the Rosetta stone. At least, I have till now compared the seven last lines, which not only correspond with the Rosetta in the contents but in the length of each individual line; the inscription must first be copied, ere I can say more about it; in any case the gain for Egyptian philology is not inconsiderable, if only a portion of the broken decree of Rosetta can be restored by it. The whole of the first part of the inscription of Rosetta, which precedes the decree, is wanting here. Instead of it, a second decree is there, which relates to the same Ptolemæus Epiphanes; in the beginning the “fortress of Alexander,” i. e. the city of Alexandria, is mentioned, for the first time, upon any of the monuments hitherto made known. Both decrees close, like the inscription of Rosetta, with the determination to set up the inscription in hieroglyphical, Demotic, and Greek writing. But the Greek inscription is wanting, if it were not written in red and rubbed out when Ptolemy Lathyrus engraved his hieroglyphic inscriptions over earlier ones.[61]

The hieroglyphic series of Ptolemies, which occurs here, again begins with Philadelphus, while it begins with Soter in the Greek text of the Rosetta inscription. Another very remarkable circumstance is, that Epiphanes is here called the son of Philopator Ptolemæus, and Cleopatra is mentioned, while according to the historical accounts the only wife of Philopator was named Arsinoe, and is so named in the Rosetta inscription and on other monuments. She is certainly also named Cleopatra in one passage of Pliny; this would have been taken for an error of the author or a mistake of the manuscripts, if a hieroglyphic and indeed official document did not present the interchange of names. There is consequently no farther reason to place, as Champollion-Figeac does, the embassy of Marcus Atilius and Marcus Acilius from the Roman Senate to Egypt to settle a new treaty concerning the Queen Cleopatra mentioned by Livy, in the time of Ptolemæus Epiphanes, instead of under Ptolemæus Philopator, as other authors inform us. We must rather conceive, either that the wife and sister of Philopator had both names, which would not obviate all the difficulties, or that the project which Appian mentions of a marriage of Philopator with the Syrian Cleopatra, who afterwards became the wife of Epiphanes, was carried out after the murder of Arsinoe, without mention of it by the historians. Here naturally means are wanting to me in order to bring this point clearly out.[62]

The quantity of Greek inscriptions at Philae is innumerable, and Letronne will be interested to hear that I have found on the base of the second obelisk, still in its own place, of which a portion only went to England with the other obelisk, the remains of a Greek inscription written in red, and perhaps once gilt, like those lately discovered on the base in England, but which is, of course, extremely difficult to decipher. That the hieroglyphical inscriptions of the obelisks, which I myself copied in Dorsetshire, besides the Greek on the base, and subsequently published in my Egyptian Atlas, have nothing to do with the Greek inscriptions, and were also not contemporaneously set up, I have already stated in a letter to Letronne; but whether the inscription on the second base had not some connection with that of the first is still a question; the correspondence of the three known inscriptions seems certainly to be settled.

The principal temple of the island was dedicated to Isis. She alone is named “Lady of Philek;” Osiris was only Θεὸς σύνναος, which is peculiarly expressed in the hieroglyphics, and is only exceptionally called “Lord of Philek;” but he was “Lord of Ph-i-uêb,” i. e. Abaton, and Isis, who was σύνναος there, is only occasionally called “Lady of Ph-i-uêb.” From this it is evident that the famous grave of Osiris was upon his own island of Phiuêb, and not on Philek. Both places are distinctly indicated as islands by their determinations. It is therefore not to be thought that the Abaton of the inscriptions and historians was a particular place on the island of Philae; it was an island in itself. So also do Diodorus and Plutarch intimate by their expression πρὸς Φίλαις. Diodorus decidedly refers to the island with the grave of Osiris as a distinct island, which was named ἱερὸν πεδίον, “the holy field,” by reason of this grave. This is a translation of Ph-i-uêb, or Ph-ih-uêb (for the h is also found expressed hieroglyphically), Koptic

, Ph-iah-uêb, “the sacred field.”[63] This consecrated place was an Abaton, and unapproachable except for the priests.

On the sixth of November we quitted the charming island, and commenced our Ethiopian journey. Already at Debôd, the next temple lying to the south, hieroglyphically Tabet (in Koptic perhaps

), we found the sculptures of an Ethiopian King Arkamen, the Ergamenes of the historians, who reigned at the time of Ptolemæus Philadelphus, and stood probably in very friendly relations with Egypt. In the French work on Champollion’s Expedition (I have not Rosellini’s work with me) there is great confusion here. Several plates, belonging to Dakkeh, are ascribed to Debôd, and vice versâ. At Gertassi we collected nearly sixty Greek inscriptions. Letronne, who knew them through Gau, has perhaps already published them; I am anxious to know what he had made of the γόμοι, the priests of whom play a conspicuous part in these inscriptions, and of the new Gods Σρούπτιχις and Πουρεποῦνις.

With what inaccuracy the Greeks often caught up the Egyptian names is again shown by the inscriptions of Talmis, which call the same god Mandulis, which is distinctly enough in the hieroglyphic Meruli, and was the local deity of Talmis. It is remarkable that the name of Talmis, so frequently occurring in this temple, nowhere appears in the neighbouring, though certainly much more ancient, the rock temple of Bet el Ualli. Dendûr, also, had a peculiar patron, the God Petisi, who appears nowhere else, and is usually named Peshir Tenthur; Champollion’s plates are here again in strange disorder, the representations and the inscriptions being wrongly put together.

The temples of Gerf Hussên and Sebûa are peculiarly remarkable, because Ramses-Sesostris, who built them, here appears as a deity, and is adorning himself, beside Phtha and Ammon, the two chief deities of this temple. In the first, he is even once called “Ruler of the Gods.”

Champollion has well remarked, that all the temples of the Ptolemies and Roman emperors in Nubia were probably only restorations of earlier sanctuaries, which were erected in the old time by the Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. That was the temple of Pselchis, first built by Tuthmosis III. Beside the scattered fragments of this first building, which, however, was not dedicated to Thoth, as Champollion thinks, but to Horus, and therefore underwent a later change, we have found others of Sethos I. and Menephthes: also, it appears that the earlier erection did not have its axis parallel with the river like the later one, but, like almost all other temples, had its entrances toward the river.

At the temple of Korte, the doorway only is inscribed with hieroglyphics of the worst style. But these few were sufficient to inform us that it was a sanctuary of Isis, here denominated “Lady of Kerte.” We also found blocks rebuilt in the walls, which has escaped former travellers, belonging to an earlier temple erected by Tuthmosis III., the foundations of which may still be traced.

We gathered our last harvest of Greek inscriptions at Hierasykaminos. To this place, the Greek and Roman travellers were protected by the garrison of Pselchis; and by a fixed camp called Mehendi, some hours southerly from Hierasykaminos, which is not mentioned in the maps. Primis seems only to have had a temporary garrison during the campaign of Petronius. Mehendi—which name probably only signifies the structure, the camp in Arabic—is the best preserved Roman encampment that I have ever seen. It lies upon a somewhat steep height, and thence commands the river and a little valley extending on the south side of the camp from the Nile, and turns the caravan road into the desert, which comes back to the side of the river again at Medik. The wall of the town encloses a square running down the hill a little to the east, and measuring one hundred and seventy-five paces from south to north, and one hundred and twenty-five from east to west. From the walls there rise regularly four corner and four middle towers; of the latter, the south and north formed also the gates, which, for the sake of greater security, led into the city with a bend, and not in a direct line. The southern gate, and the whole southerly part of the fortress, which comprehended about one hundred and twenty houses, are excellently preserved. Immediately behind the gate, one enters a straight street, sixty-seven paces long, which is even now, with but little interruption, vaulted; several narrow by-streets lead off on both sides, and are covered, like all the houses of the district, with vaults of Nile bricks. The street leads to a great open place in the middle of the city, by which lay, on the highest point of the hill, the largest and best-built house—no doubt belonging to the commandant—with a semicircular niche at the eastern end. The city walls are built of unhewn stone; the gateway only, which has a well-turned Roman arch, is erected of well-cut freestone, among the blocks of which several are built in, bearing sculptures of pure Egyptian, though late style, as a proof that there was an Egyptian or Ethiopian sanctuary here (probably an Isis chapel) before the building of the fortress. We discovered an Osiris head and two Isis heads; one of which still distinctly bore the red marks of the third canon of proportion.

The last monument we visited before our arrival in Korusko, was the temple of Ammon in the Wadi Sebùa (Lion’s Dale); so called from the rows of sphinxes which just peep out of the sand ocean that fell and covered the whole temple as far as it was exposed. Even the western portion of the temple, hewn in the rock, is filled with sand; and we had to summon the whole crew of our bark to assist in obtaining an entrance into this part. We encountered a novel and very peculiar combination of divine and human natures in a group of four deities, the first of whom is called “Phtha of Ramses in the house of Ammon;” the second, “Phtha,” with other usual cognomens; the third, “Ramses in the house of Ammon;” and the fourth, “Hathor.” In another inscription “Ammon of Ramses in the house of Ammon” was named. It is difficult to explain this combination.[64]

I was not less astonished to find in the front court of the temple of Ammon a representation of the posterity of the King Ramses-Miamun, in number one hundred and sixty children, with their names and titles, of which the greater part are scarcely to be read, as they are very much destroyed, and others are covered with rubbish, and can only be reckoned by the space they occupy. There were but twenty-five sons and ten daughters of this great king previously known. The two legitimate wives whose images appear on the monuments, he did not have at the same time, but took the second at the death of the first. To-day we were visited by the old, blind, but powerful and rich, Hassan Kachef, of Derr, who was formerly the independent regent of Lower Nubia; he has had no less than sixty-four wives, of which forty-two are yet remaining; twenty-nine of his sons and seventeen daughters are yet living; how many have died, he has probably never troubled himself to count, but, according to the usual proportion of this country, they must have been about four times the number of the living ones; therefore, about two hundred children.

Korusko is an Arab place, in the midst of the land of the Nubians, or Barâbra (plural of Bérberi), who occupy the valley of the Nile from Assuan to the other side of Dongola. This is an intelligent and honest race, of peaceable, though far from slavish disposition, of handsome stature, and with shining reddish brown skin.[65] The possession of Korusko by Arabs of the Ababde tribes, who inhabit the whole of the eastern desert, from Assuan down to Abu Hammed, may be accounted for by the important position of the place, as the point whence the great caravan road, leading directly to the province of Berber, departs, thus cutting off the whole western bend of the Nile.

The Arabic language, in which we could now, at any rate, order and question, and carry on a little conversation of politeness, had grown so familiar to our ear in Egypt, that the Nubian language was attractive on account of its novelty. It is divided, as far as I have yet been able to ascertain, into a northern and a southern dialect, which meet at Korusko.[66] The language is totally distinct in character to the Arabic, even in the primary elements the consonantal and vocalic systems. It is much more euphonious, as it has scarcely any doubling of consonants, no harsh guttural tones, few sibilating sounds, and many simple vowels, more distinctly separated than in Arabic, by which an effeminate mixture of vowels is also avoided. It has not the slightest connection in any part of its grammatical constitution, or in the roots, either with the Semetic languages, nor with the Egyptian, or with our own; and therefore, certainly belongs to the original African stock, unconnected with the Ethiopic-Egyptian family, though the nation may be comprehended by the ancients under the general name of Ethiopians, and though their physical race may stand in a nearer relation to them. They are not a commercial people, and therefore can only count up to twenty in their language; the higher numbers are borrowed from the Arabic, although they employ a peculiar term for one hundred, imil.[67] Genders scarcely exist in the language, except in personal pronouns, standing alone; they distinguish. “he” and “she,” but not “he gives” and “she gives.” They use suffixed inflections, as in our languages, rather than changes of accent, like the Semetic. The ordinals are formed by the termination iti, the plural by îgi; they have no dual. The union of the verb with the pronoun is both by prefix and affix, but is simple and natural; they distinguish the present tense and the preterite; the future is expressed by a particle, even for the passive they have a peculiar formation. The root of negation is “m,” usually with the following “n,” the single affinity, probably more than accidental with other families of language. Their original number of roots is very limited. They have certainly distinct words for sun, moon, and stars; but the expressions for year, month, day, hour, they borrow from the Arabic; water, ocean, river, are all signified by the same words with essi, yet it is remarkable, that they designate the Nile by a peculiar term tossi. For all native tamed wild animals, they have native names, for houses, and even all that concerns shipping, they use Arabic terms; the boat only they call kub, which has no very apparent connection with the Arabic mérkab. For date-fruit and date-tree, which have different designations in Arabic, bellah and nachele, they have only one word, béti (fentί); the sycamore-tree they name in Arabic, but it is remarkable, that they designate the sont-tree by the word for tree in general. Spirit, God, slave, the ideas of relationship, the parts of the body, weapons, field fruits, and what relates to the preparation of bread, have Nubian names; while the words servant, friend, enemy, temple, to pray, to believe, to read, are all Arabic. It is curious that they have separate words for writing and book, but not for stylus, ink, paper, letter. The metals are all named in Arabic, with the exception of iron. Rich are they in Berber, poor in Arabic, and in fact they are all rich in their poor country, to which they cling like Switzers, and despise the Arab gold, that they might win in Egypt, where their services, as guards and all posts of confidence, are much sought.

We now only stay for the arrival of the camels to begin our desert journey. Hence to Abu Hammed, an eight days’ journey, we shall only find drinkable water once, and then we shall continue our camel ride for four more days to Berber. There we shall find barks, according to the arrangements of Ahmed Pasha. We must then continue on to Chartûm, in order to provision; to proceed higher up, to Abu Haras, and thence to Mandera, in the eastern desert, will scarcely be worth while, if we may believe Linant; but Ahmed Pasha has promised to send an officer to Mandera, in order to test again the reports of the native.

This report I shall send with other letters by an express messenger to Qeneh.

LETTER XVI.

Korusko.
January 5, 1844.

With not a little sorrow, I announce to you that we shall probably have to give up the second principal object of our expedition,—our Ethiopian journey, and return northward hence. We have waited here in vain since the 17th of November, for the promised but never-coming camels, which are to bring us to Berber, and there seems to be no more chance of our getting them now than at first. What we heard on our arrival, I am sorry to say, is confirmed; the Arab tribes, who are the sole managers of traffic, are dissatisfied with Mohammed Ali’s reduction of the rate from 80 to 60 piastres per camel hence to Berber; they have agreed among themselves to send no more camels hither; and no firman, no promises, no threats, will obviate this evil. A great number of trunks with munition for Chartûm, have been lying here for ten months, and cannot be sent on any further. We hoped for the assistance of Ahmed Pasha Menekle,[68] the new Governor of the Southern Provinces, which he has also promised us in the most friendly and unbounded manner. The officer who has remained with the munition, received definite orders from him to retain the first camels which arrived here, for our use. Notwithstanding that, we shall scarcely attain our end. The Pasha himself could hardly get on further, although he required but few camels. Some he had brought from the north, and some he had assembled by force. Yet he was ill-furnished enough on his departure, and half of his animals are said to have become ill, or perished in the desert.

On the 3rd of December, as no camels came, although the Pasha must have passed the province Berber, whence he was going to send us the necessary number, I sent our own trustworthy and excellent khawass, Ibrahim Aga, through nine days wilderness, to Berber, with Mohammed Ali’s firman. In the meantime, we went on to Wadi Halfa to the second cataract, visited the numerous monuments in that neighbourhood, and returned hither in three weeks, with a rich harvest.

It is thirty-one days this morning, since our khawass has departed, and some time since I received a letter from the Mudhir of Berber, in which I learn that the camels cannot be collected, although immediately on the arrival of our khawass, and the delivery of the letter from the Mudhir of this place, he sent out soldiers to get together the necessary number of sixty camels. Matters are just the same there as here. The authorities can do nothing against the ill-will of the Arabs.

On the sudden death, by poison, of Ahmed Pasha,[69] the governor of the whole Sudan, at Chartûm, who, it is said, had for some time been meditating an independence of Mohammed Ali, the south is divided into five provinces, and placed under five pashas, who are to be installed by Ahmed Pasha Menekle. One of them, Emir Pasha, was formerly Bey under Ahmed Pasha, at Chartûm, whom he seems to have betrayed. Three others arrived at Korusko, soon after Ahmed Pasha Menekle. Of these, the most powerful, Hassan Pasha, is gone by water to Wadi Halfa, in his province of Dongola; he was almost unattended, and required but a few camels to get on farther. The second, Mustaffa Pasha, intended for Kordofan, has seized on a trade caravan returning from Berber. The Arabs report, however, that of these tired animals, a part have already become useless before arriving at the wells, which lie at about four day’s journey into the wilderness; there he found some merchants, eight of whose camels he seized; the remainder of the caravan has not arrived here, but had taken another road to Egypt for fear of being stopped again. The third, Pasha Ferhât, is waiting here, at the same time with ourselves, and tries every plan that he can think of, to procure a few camels from the north or south. But every hope of ours thus becomes fainter and fainter, as we cannot set the insignificant power of the authorities so mightily to work as he, and have not now either khawass or firman with us. Everyone, and the pashas most particularly, endeavours to comfort us from day to day; but, meantime, the winter, the only time when we can do anything in the Upper Country, elapses. To this must be added, that the Mudhir of Lower Nubia, with whom we had become friendly, has been accused to Mohammed Ali by the Nubian sheikh of his province, and had just been summoned away by the viceroy, This region has been provisionally placed under the jurisdiction of the Mudhir of Esneh, from whose lieutenant, a young, and otherwise well-disposed man, there is nothing to be obtained by us.

I have, therefore, made up my mind to the only practicable step. I will myself go to Berber with Abeken upon a few camels, and leave Erbkam with the rest of the company and all the luggage here. There I shall be able to look into the matter myself, and try what can be done, with the aid of the khawass (whose authority I miss here much) and the firman. We were received here by Ahmed Pasha Menekle in the most friendly manner, and are assured of his most strenuous co-operation by the assistance of his physician, our friend and countryman, Dr. O. Koch. Perhaps money or threats will bring us sooner or later to our end. By a mere chance, I have myself been able to secure six camels. Two more are wanting to complete our little caravan. These two, however, the lieutenant of the Mudhir cannot procure for us, even with the best desire. We have been awaiting them three days, and know not whether we shall obtain them.

LETTER XVII.

E’ Damer.
January 24, 1844.

Our trouble has at last come to an end, though at a late period. Yesterday I arrived here with Abeken, yet two days’ journey from the pyramids of Meroë, and our whole camp probably was also yesterday pitched near Abu Hammed, at the southern end of the great desert. After the last little encouraging communication from Berber, I set out on the 8th of January about noon, with Abeken, the dragoman Juffuf Sherebîeh, a cook, and ’Auad, our Nubian lad. We had eight camels, of whom two were scarcely in condition for the journey, and two donkeys. As the promised guide was not at his post, I made the camel-driver Sheikh Ahmed himself accompany us, as he would be of service in consequence of the high estimation in which he was held among the tribes of the resident Abâbde-Arabs. We had beside these, a guide, Adâr, who was sent us instead of the one promised, five camel-drivers; and soon after our departure several foot-travellers joined us, besides two people with donkeys, who took this opportunity of returning to Berber. We took with us ten water-skins, some provision of rice, maccaroni, biscuit, and cold meat, also a light tent, our coverlets to ride upon and sleep in, the most necessary linen, and a few books; to this must be added a tolerable stock of courage, which never fails me on a journey. Our friends accompanied us for some distance into the rock valley, which soon deprived us of all idea of the proximity of the shore and its friendly palms.

The dale was wild and monotonous, nothing but sandstone rock, the surfaces of which were burnt as black as coals, but turned into burning golden yellow at every crack, and every ravine, whence a number of sand-rivulets, like fire-streams from black dross, ran and filled the valleys. The guides preceded us, with simple garments thrown over their shoulders and around their hips, in their hands one or two spears of strong light wood with iron points and shaft-ends; their naked backs were covered by a round, or carved shield, with a far-reaching boss of giraffe’s skin; other shields were oblong, and they are generally made of the skin of the hippopotamus, or the back skin of the crocodile. At night, and often during the day, they bound sandals under their feet, the thongs of which are not unfrequently cut out of the same piece, and being drawn between the great and second toes, surround the feet like a skate.

Sheikh Ahmed was a splendid man, still young, but tall and well grown, with peculiarly active limbs of shining black-brown hue, an expressive countenance, a piercing, but gentle and slyly-glancing eye, and an incomparably beautiful and harmonious pronunciation, so that I liked much to have him about me, although we were always in a contention at Korusko, as he was obliged to furnish the camels and their concomitants, and through circumstances, could not or would not, procure them. Of his activity and elasticity of limb he gave us a specimen in the desert, by taking a tremendous run on the sandy and most unfavourable soil, and leaping fourteen feet and a half; I measured it with his lance, which was somewhat more than two metres in length. Adâr only, our under guide, dared to try his powers after him, at my suggestion, but did not reach the same distance by far.

We had departed on the first day early about eleven o’clock, and rode till five, stayed for an hour and a half, and went on till half-past twelve; then we pitched our tent upon the hard soil, and laid ourselves down after a twelve hours’ march. The most interesting thing after the hot active days was the evening tea, but we were obliged to accustom ourselves to the leathery taste of the water, which was plainly to be perceived even through both tea and coffee. The second day we stopped for fourteen hours on our camels; we set out at eight, stopped in the afternoon at four, to eat something, went on about half-past five, and pitched for the night at half-past twelve, after having issued from the mountains at about ten, at the rising of the moon, into a great plain. No tree, no tuft of grass had we yet seen, also no animals, except a few vultures and crows feeding on the carcase of the latest fallen camel. On the third day, after an early beginning, we met a herd of 150 camels, bought by government, to be taken to Egypt. The Pasha is going to import several thousand camels from Berber, in order to obviate the consequence of the murrain of last year; many had already come through Korusko without our being able to avail ourselves of them, as they are the private property of the Pasha; we could not have ridden on them, too, as they had no saddles.

The guide of the herd, whom we met, gave us the long desired intelligence that our khawass, Ibrahim Aga, had left Berber with a train of sixty camels, and was quite in our vicinity, but on a more westerly track. Sheikh Ahmed was sent after him, in order to bring in three good camels instead of our weak ones, and to obtain any further news from him. Next night, or at farthest in the following one, he was to rejoin us. By the Chabîr (leader) of the train, I sent a few lines to Erbkam. We stopped at half-past five, and stayed the night, in the hopes of seeing Sheikh Ahmed earlier. Towards evening we first beheld the scanty vegetation of the desert, thin greyish yellow dry stalks, hardly visible close by, but giving the ground a light greenish yellow tint in the distance, which alone drew my attention to it.

On the fourth day we ought actually to have been at the wells of brackish but, for the camels, drinkable water; but in order not to go too fast for Sheikh Ahmed, we halted at four o’clock, still about four hours’ distance from the wells. At last, towards mid-day, we left the great plain Bahr Bela ma, (river without water,) which joins the two days’ long mountain range of El Bab, into which we had entered from Korusko, and now neared other mountains. Till now we had had nothing but uniform sandstone rocks beneath and around us, and it was a pleasing circumstance when I perceived, from the high back of the camel, the first plutonic rock in the sand. I slipped down immediately from my saddle, and knocked off a piece; it was a grey green stone, of very fine texture, and without a doubt of granitical nature. The other mountains also were mostly composed of species of porphyry and granite, with which the red syenite, so much employed by the ancient Egyptians, as so extensively seen at Assuan, not unfrequently appears in broad veins. Farther into the mountains quartz predominated, and it was somewhat peculiar to see the snow-white flint veins peeping at different heights from the black mountains, and flowing streamwise down into the valley, where the white extended somewhat after the fashion of a lake. I took small specimens, also some of the various kinds of rock.

After we had passed, crossing a little ravine, the little valley Bahr Hátab, (Wood River, by reason of the wood somewhat farther in the mountains), and another Wadi Delah, on the north side of the mountains, we came to the rock-gorge of E’Sufr, where we expected to find rain-water, to replenish our shrunken water-bags (girbe pl. geràb). In this high mountain it rains in one month of the year, about May. Then the mighty basins of granite in the valleys are filled, and hold the water for the whole year. On this plutonic rock, there was some little vegetation to be seen, in consequence of the rain, and because the granite seems to contain a somewhat more fertile element than the sad-looking, brittle sand, composed almost wholly of particles of quartz. At Wadi Delah, which has water in the rainy season, we came to a long-continued row of dûm-palms, the rounded leaves and bushy growth of which makes a less crude impression than the long slender-leaved date-palms; the latter will not bear rain, and are therefore altogether wanting in Berber, while the dûm-palms occur at first very singly in Upper Egypt, and become more numerous, more full, and more large, the farther they reach southward. When their fruit drops off unripe and dry, the little eatable matter about the stone tastes like sugar; when ripe, the yellow wood-flavoured meat may be eaten; it tastes well, and some fruits had an aroma like the pine-apple. They sometimes grow to the size of the largest apples.

At four o’clock we pitched our tent, the camels were sent behind into the ravine where was the rain-water, and I and Abeken mounted our donkeys, to accompany them to these natural cisterns. Over a wild and broken path and cutting stones, we came deeper and deeper into the gorge; the first wide basins were empty, we therefore left the camels and donkeys behind, climbed up the smooth granite wall, and thus proceeded amidst these grand rocks from one basin to another; they were all empty; behind there, in the furthest ravine, the guide said there must be water, for it was never empty: but there proved to be not a single drop. We were obliged to return dry. The numerous herds which had been driven from the Sudan to Egypt in the previous year, had consumed it all. We had now only three skins of water, and therefore it was necessary to do something. Higher up the pass, there were said to be other cisterns; behind this ravine I proposed to climb the mountain with the guide, but he considered it too dangerous; we therefore turned back and rode to the camp, and at sundown the camels had to set forth again to the northern mountains in search of water reported to exist at an hour’s distance, and they returned late, bringing with them four skins—the water was good and tasted well. Sheikh Ahmed, however, did not return this night also, and we now hoped to meet him at the wells, whither he might have hasted by a more southerly track.

We set out on the fifth day soon after sunrise, and entered the great mountain passes of Roft, the uniform strata of which were first in layers of slate, then more in blocks, and afterwards very rich in quartz. The heat of the day was more oppressive in the mountains than in the plains, where the continual north-wind created some degree of coolness. Except the various sorts of rock, there was nothing of very great attractiveness. I found a great ant-hill in the midst of the desolate waste, and looked at it for a long time; they were small and large shining black ants, who carried away all the grosser earthy particles they could manage, and left the stones for walls; the larger ones had heads comparatively twice as large as the others, and did not work themselves, but acted as overseers, by giving a push to every little ant who did not help to carry, which drove it forward and instigated it to labour.

It is difficult to keep up a conversation on the clumsy camels, which cannot be kept side by side so easily as horses or donkeys. If you have a good dromedary (heggîn), and travel without luggage, or with very little, the animal remains in trot. This is easy and not very tiring, while it requires some time to accustom oneself to the slouching step of the usual burthen-camel; this, however, we managed to lighten, by occasionally mounting our donkeys, and often walked long distances early in the morning and late at night.

I return to our fifth day in the desert, on which we set forth early, about eight o’clock, from the little valley E’ Sufr, where we had pitched our tent under some gum or sont-trees, and arrived at half-past twelve, after we had left the road about half an hour, and turned to the left into a wide valley, at the brackish wells of Wadi Murhad. Here we had concluded about half of our journey; we saw a few huts built of small stones and sedge, near which a couple of thin goats sought fruitlessly for some food; our black host led us into an arbour of bulrushes, where we made ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would permit.

In this valley we had for some time observed the snow-white surface of the natron on the sand, which makes the water in the valley brackish. Toward the end of the valley, where it divides into two branches, there are the standing waters, five or six feet below the surface, which have been dug out into eight wells. The furthest wells have a greenish, salt, and ill-tasting water, which, however, serves the camels very well; the three front ones, however, have brighter water, which we could have drunk very well, if it had been necessary. This is a government station usually occupied by six people; at this time four were on an excursion and only two in the place. Two ways led hence to Korusko, a western and an eastern one; Ibrahim Aga had unfortunately chosen the former, by which we had missed him, having ourselves taken the latter. Sheikh Ahmed was not to be found here; probably he had only reached our camels on the second day, and we were therefore obliged to proceed without him.

The Abâbde Arabs, with whom we had now everywhere to do, are a true and trustworthy people, from whom one has less to fear than from the cunning thievish Fellahs of Egypt. To the north-east of them are the Bishari tribes, who speak a peculiar language, and are now at bitter feud with the Abâbde, because they waylaid and murdered some Turkish soldiers two years ago in the little valley, where we stayed the night, and for which Hassan Chalif, the superior sheikh of the Abâbde, to whose care the highway between Berber and Korusko is committed, had nearly forty of the Bishari executed. With the aid of the Abâbde, too, Ismael Pasha had been able four-and-twenty years before to bring his army though the desert and seize the Sudan. Guides are only posted by government along the road by which we were coming, but not on the longer but better watered line from Berber to Assuan, which is now little used.

At half-past four we rode away from the wells, after we had examined some hagr mektub (written stones, for which we everywhere inquired), on some rocks in the neighbourhood, where a number of horses, camels, and other animals had been rudely scratched, at some by no means modern period, in the same manner as we had often seen in Nubia. At half-past nine we halted for the night, after we had left the mountains an hour and a half. On the morning of the sixth day we passed the wide plain of Múndera, to which another high mountain range called Abu Sihha joins; the southern frontier of this plain, by those mountains, they call Abdêbab; the southern part of the Roft mountains behind us, Abu Senejât.

At three o’clock we left the plain, and entered the mountains again, which, like the former ranges, were of granite. Half an hour later we halted for a noontide rest. After two hours we rode on and encamped about midnight, after passing through another little plain, and the mountains of Adar Auîb into the next plain, comprehended under the same designation, which stretches to the last mountains of this desert, Gebel Graibât.

On the seventh day we set forth at the early hour of half-past seven, and came at last beyond Gebel Graibât, into a great and boundless plain, Adererât, which we did not leave until our arrival at Abu Hammed. To the south-west the little mountain El Farût, and the higher range Mograd, were in sight; in the far-east there joins another mountain to Adur Auîb, that of Abu Nugâra. South-easterly there are the other mountain chains of Bishari, the names of which were unknown to our Abâbde guides. The beginning of the plain of Adererât was quite covered for hours with beautiful pure flint, which sometimes jutted out of the sand, as rock, although the principal sort of rock continued to be black granite, which was intersected about noon by a broad vein of red granite. Early in the day a small caravan of merchants passed us at some distance.

We saw the most beautiful mirages very early in the day; they most minutely resemble seas and lakes, in which mountains, rocks, and everything in their vicinity, are reflected like in the clearest water. They form a remarkable contrast with the staring dry desert, and have probably deceived many a poor wanderer, as the legend goes. If one be not aware that no water is there, it is quite impossible to distinguish the appearance from the reality. A few days ago I felt quite sure that I perceived an overflowing of the Nile, or a branch near El Mechêref, and rode towards it, but only found Bahr Sheitan, “Satan’s water,” as the Arabs call it.

By day the caravan road cannot easily be missed, even when the sand has destroyed every trace of it; it is marked by numberless camels’ skeletons, of which several are always in sight; I counted forty-one within the last half-hour before sunset, on the previous day. Of our camels, however, although they had not long rested in Korusko, and got scarcely anything to eat or drink on the way, none were lost. Mine, in whose mouth I had occasionally put a bit of biscuit, used to stretch back his long neck in the middle of the march, until it laid its head with its large tender eyes in my lap, in order to get some more.

We halted at about four o’clock in the afternoon for two hours, and then proceeded till eleven, when we pitched our camp in the great plain. The wind, however, was so violent, that it was impossible to fasten up our tents. Notwithstanding the ten iron rings which are prepared for keeping it up, it fell three times before it was quite finished; we, therefore, let it lie, laid our own selves down behind a little wall, that the guide had constructed of camel saddles as a shelter, and slept à la belle étoile.

On the eighth day we might have arrived at Abu Hammed late in the evening, but we resolved to stay the night at an hour’s distance from that place, that we might reach the Nile by day. The birds of prey increased in the neighbourhood of the river; we scared away thirty vultures from the fresh carcase of a camel; the day before I had shot a white eagle, and some desert partridges, which were seeking durra grains on the caravan road. We only saw traces of wild beasts by the carcases; they did not trouble us at night, as in the camp at Korusko, where we had shot a hyæna, and several jackals. In the afternoon we met a slave caravan. The last encampment before reaching Abu Hammed was less windy, but our coals were exhausted, and the servants had forgotten to gather camel’s dung for the fire; therefore we were obliged to drink the last brown skin-water without boiling it, to quench our thirst. The donkeys could not be spared any of it.

We ascended the high thrones of our camels on the 16th of January, at half-past seven o’clock in the morning, and looked down thence towards the Nile. It was, however, only visible shortly before our arrival. The stream here does not flow through a broad valley, but runs along a bare rock-channel, that stretches through the flat wide plain of rock. On the other side of the river only was there any appearance of the valley, and on an island formed there stood a few dûm-palms. A little way from the shores we met another train of 150 camels, which had just left Abu Hammed. Then came an extensive earthwork, with a few towers like fortifications, which had been erected by the great Arab sheikh Hassan Chalif, for government stores. A little ravine contains five huts, one of stones and earth, another of tree trunks, two of mats, and one of bus or durra straw; then a wider place opened, surrounded with several poor-looking houses, one of which was prepared for us. A brother of Hassan Chalif, who resides here, came to receive us, led us into the house, and offered us his services. A few anqarêb (cane bed-places), which are much used here, on account of the creeping vermin, were brought in, and we established ourselves for that day and the following night; we felt that we must give the camels so much grace.

A great four-cornered space surrounded us, thirty feet on every side, the walls formed of stone and earth; a couple of trees, forked at the top, bore a great trunk for an architrave, above which there were again other roof-branches laid, and bound up and covered with mats and hurdles. It reminded me much of a primeval architecture which we had found imitated on the rock caves of Beni-hassan; there were the same pillars, the same network of the roof, through which, except by the door, as at those caves, the light only entered by one four-cornered opening in the middle, at the top, and no windows. The door-posts were composed of four short trunks, of which the upper one quite resembled the lintel in the graves of the pyramid era. We hung up a curtain before the door, to protect us from the wind and dust; at the opposite corner, a doorway led into a space that was used as a kitchen. The day was windy, and the air unpleasantly filled with sand, so that we could scarcely get out of doors. We refreshed ourselves, however, with pure, cool Nile water, and an excellent dinner of mutton. The great desert was behind us, and we had only four days more to El Mechêref, the chief, town of Berber, following the course of the river. We learned that Ahmed Pasha Menekle was in our neighbourhood, or would soon arrive, in order to make a military expedition from Dâmer, a short day’s journey on the other side of El Mechêref, up the Atbara, to the province of Taka, where some of the Bishari tribes had revolted.

When we came forth the next morning, our Arabs had all anointed themselves and put on good clothes; but what more particularly surprised us was the sight of their stately white wigs, making them look quite reverend. It is a part of their “dress,” to comb the hair into a high toupé, which is sprinkled with peculiar finely drifted butter, shining white, as if with powder. In a little while, however, when the sun is risen higher, this fat snow melts, and then the hair looks all covered with innumerable pearly dew-drops, till these, too, disappear, and run down their shoulders and neck from their dark brown hair, spreading a light upon their well-burned limbs, like antique bronze statues.

We set forward the next morning at eight o’clock, with a new camel that we had found opportunity to exchange for a tired one. The valley becomes broader and more fertile the nearer we come to the island of Meroë; the desert itself became more rank and wild, like steppes. The first station was Geg, where we spent the night in an open space; the air is very, very warm; at half-past five in the afternoon we had 25° Reaumur. The second night we stayed on the other side of Abu Hashîn, in the neighbourhood of a village, which is in reality no station, as we desired to pass the five usual stations in four days; the third day we stopped out in the air by a cataract of the Nile. On the fourth day from Abu Hammed, we kept a little further away from the river in the desert, but still within the limits of the original valley, if I may so call a yellow earth, which is not covered by the inundations, but is dug out by the villagers immediately below the sand, in order to mend their fields. We halted in the evening at the village of El Chôr, an hour from El Mechêref, and arrived in the metropolis of the province of Berber early on the fifth day.

I sent the dragoman forward to announce us, and to demand a house, which we received, and immediately entered upon. The Mudhir of Berber was in Dâmer; his vakeel, or lieutenant, visited us, and soon came Hassan Chalif, the chief Arab sheikh, who promised us better camels to Dâmer, was rejoiced to hear good tidings of his and our friends, Linant and Bonomi, and amused himself with our own books of plates, in which he found portraits of his relations and ancestors. We had scarcely arrived, ere we received intelligence that Hassan Pasha had entered the town on another side. He had journeyed from Korusko to his province of Dongola, and now returned from Edabbe, on the southern boundaries of Dongola, right through the desert of El Mechêref, where Enrin, the new Pasha of Chartûm, had come to meet him. The rencontre caused some disturbance in our plans; but we managed to travel southward on the next morning, the 22nd of January, soon after Hassan Pasha’s departure, after leaving two camels, no longer wanted for water-carrying, behind, and exchanging three others for better ones.

We rode off towards noon, and stayed in the evening at the last village, before the river Mogrân, the ancient Astaboras, which we had to pass before reaching Dâmer. It is called in the maps Atbara, evidently a corruption of Astaboras; but this designation seems to be applied to the upper river, from the place of that name, and not to the lower one. Next morning we passed the river near its embouchment. Even here it was very narrow in its great bed, which it entirely fills in the rainy season, while for two months it is only prevented from disappearing entirely by some stagnating water. On the other side of the river, we landed on the island of Meroë of Strabo, by which name the land between the Nile and Astaboras was designated. Yet two hours and we reached Dâmer.

The houses were too poor to take us in; I therefore sent Jussuf to Emin Pasha, in whose province we now were, and who had encamped, with Hassan Pasha, on the shore of the river. He sent a khawass to meet us, and to invite us to dine with him. I, however, judged it more expedient to pitch our tent at some distance, and to change our travelling costume. Immediately the Mudhir of Berber paid us his visit, to ask after our wishes, and soon after Emin Pasha sent an excellent dinner to our tent, consisting of four well-prepared dishes, and besides that, a lamb roasted whole upon the spit and filled with rice, and a flat cake filled with meat.

Toward Asser (three o’clock in the afternoon) we had our visit announced; just as we were about to proceed to it, we heard the singing of sailors; two boats came swimming down the stream with red flags and crescents: it was Ahmed Pasha Menekle returning from Chartûm. The Pasha and the Mudhir immediately proceeded on board, and they did not separate till late; our friend, Dr. Koch, was unfortunately not expected from Chartûm for two days. I had received a note from Erbkam at an early period after my arrival, in which he informed me, by the medium of a passing khawass, that he had left Korusko with Ibrahim Aga, on the 15th of January; he wrote from their first camp. The khawass had ridden with incredible swiftness from Cairo to Berber, in fourteen days, and brought Ahmed Pasha the desired permission to raise the government price for the camels from Korusko to Berber, from sixty piasters to a higher price than before, i. e. ninety piasters.

January 26th. The day before yesterday we made our visit to Ahmed Pasha, which he returned yesterday. He will do everything to facilitate our further journey. He informed us, that he, in accordance with his former promise, had sent an officer from Abu Haras to Mandera, three days into the desert, and had obtained the information from him that great ruins were existing there. The same was told us yesterday in a letter by Dr. Koch, and confirmed to-day by his word of mouth. After dinner he will bring us Musa Bey, who has been there. He also announced to us that some letters had arrived for us, and were deposited at Chartûm, and that the artist sent for from Rome had arrived at Cairo.

For our fellow-travellers a bark is prepared at El Mechêref; but I shall precede them with Abeken. Ahmed Pasha sends me word, that in an hour a courier will leave for Cairo, who shall bear these letters.

Postscript.—The magnificent news from Mandera does not seem to be confirmed on closer inquiry. It will hardly be worth while to go thither.

LETTER XVIII.

On the Blue River, Province of Sennâr.
13° North Latitude, March 2, 1844.

To-day we reach the southernmost boundary of our African journey. To-morrow we go northward and homeward again. We shall come as far as the neighbourhood of Sero, the frontier between the provinces of Sennâr and Fasoql. Our time will not admit of more stay. I have travelled from Chartûm hither with Abeken only. We gave up the desert journey to Mandera, the rather as the eastern regions are now unsafe by reason of the war in Taka. I now employ the time in learning the nature of the river, and the neighbouring country some days’ journey beyond Sennâr. The journey is worth the trouble, for the character of the whole land decidedly changes in soil, vegetation, and animals, on passing Abu Haras, between Chartûm and Sennâr, at the embouchure of the Rahad. It was necessary for me to gain as much personal knowledge of the whole Nile valley, as far up as possible, since the nature of this country, so limited in its width, has more influence than anything else upon the progress of its history.

On the White River one cannot journey for more than a few days to the frontier of Mohammed Ali’s conquests, without peculiar preparations and precautions. There are found the Shilluk on the western shore, and on the eastern, the Dinka, both native negro people, who are never the best friends with the northern folk. The Blue River is accessible to a much higher extent, and was, and is now, historically, of more consequence than the White, as it is the channel of communication between the north and Abyssinia. I should like to have proceeded into the province of Fasoql, the last under Egyptian dominion; but that will not tally with our reckoning; so we shall put a period to our southern journey to-night.

But I return in my reports to Dâmer, where I embarked on the 27th of January with Abeken, in the bark of Musa Bey, Ahmed Pasha’s first adjutant, who had kindly placed it at our disposal. We stopped for the night at about eight o’clock in the evening, near the island of Dal Haui. We had obtained a khawass from Emin Pasha, the same who had come hither on the conquering of the country with Ismael Pasha, who had accompanied the Defterdar Bey to Kordofan, (or, according to his pronunciation, Kordifal), who had then journeyed with the same on his errand of vengeance to Shendi for the murder of Ismael, and since then had traversed the whole Sudan in every direction for three and twenty years. He has the most perfect map of these countries in his head, and possesses an astounding memory for names, bearings, and distances, so that I have based two charts upon his remarks, which are not without geographical interest in some parts. He has also been to Mekka, and therefore likes to be addressed as Haggi Ibrahim (Pilgrim Ibrahim.) In other things, too, he has much experience, and will be very useful to us by reason of his long and extended acquaintance with the land.

On the twenty-eighth of January, we stopped about noon at an island called Gomra, as we heard that there were ruins in the vicinity which we should like to see. We had to proceed through a flat arm of the Nile, and ride for an hour on the eastern shore to the north. There at last we found, after passing the villages of Motmár and El Akarid, between a third village, Sagâdi, and a fourth, Genna, the inconsiderable ruins of a place built of bricks, and strewn with broken tiles.

We returned but little satisfied amidst the noon-day heat, and arrived with our bark only just before sunset in Begerauîe, in the neighbourhood of which are situated the pyramids of Meroë. It is remarkable that this place is not mentioned by Cailliaud. He only speaks of the pyramids of Assur, i.e. Sûr, or e’Sûr. The whole plain in which the ruins of the city and the pyramids lie bears the same name; and, besides this, a portion of Begerauîe, which, probably by a slip of the pen, is called Begromi by Hoskins.

Although it was already dark, I rode with Abeken to the pyramids, which stand a short hour’s ride inland, upon the slopes of the low hills that stretch along eastward. The moon alone, which was in its first quarter, sparingly lighted the plain, covered with stones, low underwood, and rushes. After a sharp ride, we came to the foot of a row of pyramids, which rose before us in the form of a crescent, as was rendered necessary by the ground. To the right joins another row of pyramids, a little retreating; a third group lies more to the south in the plains, too far off to be distinguished in the dim moonlight. I tied the bridle of my donkey round a post, and climbed up the first mound of ruins.

The single pyramids are not so exactly placed as in Egypt; yet the ante-chambers, which are here built on to the body of the structures themselves, all lie turned away from the river toward the east, doubtless for the same religious reason which actuated the Egyptians also to turn the entrance of the detached temples before their pyramids to the east, thus river-ward at Gizeh and Saqâra, but the tombs toward the west.