Travels in the Upper Egyptian deserts

PREFACE.

Some of the chapters in this book have appeared as articles in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine.’ The various journeys here recorded have been made in the ordinary course of the work of inspection, and have been reported in the usual official manner. These less technical descriptions have been written in leisure hours, and the illustrations here published are selected from a large number of photographs and drawings rapidly made by the wayside. The journey to Wady Hammamât and Kossair was made in the company of three painters, Mr Charles Whymper, Mr Walter Tyndale, and Mr Erskine Nicol, to whom my thanks are due, as also they are to Mr John Wells, with whom I travelled to Gebel Dukhân. I am indebted to Prof. Sayce and Mr Seymour de Ricci for several notes on the Greek inscriptions at Wady Abâd. On some of the journeys I was accompanied by Mahmoud Effendi Rushdy and Mahmoud Effendi Muhammed, Inspectors of the Department of Antiquities, whose assistance was valuable.

ARTHUR E. P. WEIGALL.

Luxor,

Upper Egypt.

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Travels in the

Upper Egyptian Deserts.

I.

THE EASTERN DESERT AND ITS INTERESTS.

I know a young man who declares that after reading a certain explorer’s description of a journey across the burning Sahara, he found to his amazement that his nose was covered with freckles. The reader will perhaps remember how, on some rainy day in his childhood, he has sat over the fire and has read sea-stories and dreamed sea-dreams until his lips, he will swear, have tasted salt. Alas, one’s little agility in the art of narration is wholly inadequate for the production, at this time of life, of any such phenomena upon the gentle skins of those who chance to read these pages. Were one a master-maker of literature, one might herewith lead the imaginative so straight into the boisterous breezes of Egypt, one might hold them so entranced in the sunlight which streams over the desert, that they would feel, wherever they might be seated, the tingling glow of the sun and the wind upon their cheeks, and would hold their hands to their eyes as a shelter from the glare. The walls of their rooms would fall flat as those of Jericho; and outside they would see the advancing host of the invaders—the sunshine, the north wind, the scudding clouds, the circling eagles, the glistening sand, the blue shadows, and the rampant rocks. And the night closing over the sack of their city, they would see the moonlight, the brilliant stars, the fluttering bats, the solemn owls; and they would hear the wailing of the hyænas and the barking of the dogs in the distant camps. If one only possessed the ability, one might weave such a magic carpet for those who knew how to ride upon it, that, deserting the fallen Jericho of their habitation, they would fly to the land of the invaders which they had seen, and there they would be kept as spell-bound and dazzled by the eyes of the wilderness as ever a child was dazzled by a tale of the sea.

But with this ability lacking it is very doubtful whether the reader will be able to appreciate the writer’s meaning; and, without the carpet, it is a far cry from Upper Egypt, where these words are written, to the fireside where they are read. Nevertheless I will venture to give an account here of some journeys made in the Upper Egyptian desert, in the hope rather of arousing interest in a fascinating country than of placing on record much information of value to science; although the reader interested in Egyptian archæology will find some new material upon which to speculate.

The Upper Egyptian desert is a country known only to a very few. The resident, as well as the visitor, in Egypt raises his eyes from the fertile valley of the Nile to the bare hills, and lowers them once more with the feeling that he has looked at the wall of the garden, the boundary of the land. There is, however, very much to be seen and studied behind this wall; and those who penetrate into the solitudes beyond will assuredly find themselves in a world of new colours, new forms, and new interests. In the old days precious metal was sought here, ornamental stone was quarried, trade-routes passed through to the Red Sea, and the soldiery of Egypt, and later of Rome, marched from station to station amidst its hills. The desert as one sees it now is, so to speak, peopled with the ghosts of the Old World; and on hidden hill-slopes or in obscure valleys one meets with the remains of ancient settlements scattered through the length and breadth of the country.

The number of persons who have had the energy to climb the garden wall and to wander into this great wilderness is so small that one might count the names upon the fingers. Lepsius, the German Egyptologist, passed over some of the routes on which antiquities were to be met with; Golénischeff, the Russian Egyptologist, checked some of his results; Schweinfurth, the German explorer, penetrated to many of the unknown localities, and mapped a great part of the country; Bellefonds Bey, the Director-General of Public Works in Egypt under Muhammed Aly, made a survey of the mineral belt lying between the river and the Red Sea; and during the last score of years various prospectors and miners have visited certain points of interest to them. The Government Survey Department is now engaged in mapping this Eastern Desert, and two most valuable reports have already been published; while for a few years there existed a Mines Department, whose director, Mr John Wells, made himself acquainted with many of the routes and most of the mining centres. Thus, most of the journeys here to be recorded have not been made over absolutely new ground; though, except for the expert reports of the Survey Department and some papers by Schweinfurth, it would be a difficult matter to unearth any literature on the subject. In describing these journeys, however, one is often enabled to indulge in the not unpleasing recollection that one is writing of places which no other European eyes have seen.

Those who have travelled in Egypt will not need to be told how the Nile, flowing down from the Sudan to the distant sea, pushes its silvery way through the wide desert: now passing between the granite hills, now through regions of sandstone, and now under the limestone cliffs. A strip of verdant cultivated land, seldom more than six or eight miles wide, and often only as many yards, borders the broad river; and beyond this, on either side, is the desert. In Upper Egypt one may seldom take an afternoon’s ride due east or due west without passing out either on to the sun-baked sand of a limitless wilderness or into the liquid shadows of the towering hills. For the present we are not concerned with the western desert, which actually forms part of the great Sahara, and one’s back may therefore be turned upon it.

Eastwards, behind the hills or over the sand, there is in most parts of the country a wide undulating plain, broken here and there by the limestone outcrops. Here the sun beats down from a vast sky, and the traveller feels himself but a fly crawling upon a brazen table. In all directions the desert stretches, until, in a leaden haze, the hot sand meets the hot sky. The hillocks and points of rock rise like islands from the floods of the mirage in which they are reflected; and sometimes there are clumps of withered bushes to tell of the unreality of the waters.

The scenery here is often of exquisite beauty; and its very monotony lends to it an interest when for a while the grouping of the hills ceases to offer new pictures and new harmonies to the eye. Setting out on a journey towards the Red Sea one rides on camel-back over this rolling plain, with the sun bombarding one’s helmet from above and the wind charging it from the flank; and, as noonday approaches, one often looks in vain for a rock under which to find shade. Naturally the glaring sand is far hotter