THE VALLEY OF HAMMAMáT
WE left Lakéta at dawn the next day. Being on higher ground and so much further in the desert, we felt the cold more than on the previous morning, and it was hard to realise that we should be seeking a shady spot for our luncheon at midday. We trotted our camels faster than previously, as if in a hurry to get nearer the luminous red disk which was peering over the distant hills.
The desert so far was hard surfaced, and not the sandy waste one is given to expect. When I attempted to make Laura go at more than a fast trot, I soon looked anxiously about for soft places below, and I was lucky in having kept my seat till she caught up with the rest of the party, when she as usual took her pace from that of the leader.
We passed nothing of exceptional interest during the first ten miles. The valley we followed would widen out to a mile or more, and sometimes contract to a few hundred feet. The rows of camel tracks, marked here and there by the skeleton of one which had fallen on the way, showed that this was still an important highway. I counted over twenty of these skeletons during one hour’s ride. Some may have been bleaching there222 for many years, but a few were of sufficiently recent date to make it advisable to keep on the windward side of them. The hackneyed camel ribs in the foregrounds of pictures of desert incidents are not the stage property I used to think they might be.
The Kasr el-Benat, or ‘the Castle of the Maidens,’ was the first object of real arch?ological interest we reached. It is a Roman station known formerly as the Hydreuma, and is still in a very fair state of preservation. No new builders have been at work near here since, to use it as a quarry with ready-cut stones; and Time in the desert deals gently with the structures of bygone ages. Roman soldiers in charge of gangs of quarrymen have used the little vaulted chambers within the large rectangular enclosing wall.
A huge rock close by was covered with inscriptions and rude drawings, dating from the early dynasties to the times when Arab traders began to use this highway to the coast. Drawings and photographs were duly taken of these records; and during most of that day we zigzagged across the valley to wherever a smooth rock surface showed any likelihood of inscriptions being found. We were seldom disappointed, and on one rock in particular our interest was particularly excited, for the graffiti here threw some light on the much vexed question as to the age of Akhnaton when he first came to the throne. I have described elsewhere our excitement at Thebes when, during the previous season, the royal tomb of Queen Thiy was discovered; how, after the body had been bereft of its royal casing, the arch?ological world was startled to find that the body was that of a young man.
223 Since then Weigall has made out a strong case in favour of the mummy being that of the heretic Queen’s son, Ammonhotep IV. (vide the October number of Blackwood’s Magazine for 1907). This same Ammonhotep, when secure of his throne, at the instigation of his mother, proclaimed the worship of Aton—the one supreme God whose earthly manifestation was the sun’s disk—and, so as to sever every tie with the worship of Ammon and the lesser divinities of that pantheism, the young Pharaoh changed his name from Ammonhotep to Akhnaton, i.e. the Beloved of Aton.
The weak point in Weigall’s contention was the youth of the mummy, which Dr. Elliot Smith declared could not have exceeded some five-and-twenty years of age, and it was doubtful whether he could have inaugurated and carried out a great religious revolution had he died at so early an age.
The three cartouches on this rock face are: one of Queen Thiy, one of her son as Ammonhotep IV., and one of the same prince under the name of Akhnaton. The symbols of royalty are placed beneath each cartouche, while the rays of the sun’s disk embrace the three from above. This clearly proves that the Pharaoh was still a child when he came to the throne, and that his mother ruled in fact if not in name, otherwise the royal cartouches would not have been united as here they are; and it also proves that the worship of Aton had begun while the prince was still under the tutelage of his mother.
As the images of Ammon and the lesser divinities were destroyed during the youth of Akhnaton, so did224 the priests of Ammon, when the old religion was restored, deface the inscriptions relating to the newer creed. The cartouches here of both Thiy and Akhnaton were partly erased; but the rays, terminating in hands, from the disk above were left intact as if the workmen, sent to obliterate the ‘marks of the beast,’ feared to desecrate the divine symbol. Thus after three and a half millenniums this rock gives an echo of the religious movement which caused the fall of the eighteenth dynasty.
I have so far encroached on a subject fully treated by Weigall because I had devoted a chapter to it in Below the Cataracts and sent this into print before the subject had been so fully thrashed out, and while speculation was rife as to whom to ascribe the mummy found in the royal sarcophagus of the great Queen Thiy.
Shortly after losing sight of the tell-tale rock and the Roman Hydreuma, our path lay through a narrowing valley which contracted to a pass between imposing masses of granite, now known as el-Mutrak es-Salam. It was an awe-inspiring pass. These gigantic and shiny black rocks which rose up on each side of us, deprived as they were of every vestige of growth, seemed hardly terrestrial, and suggested some landscape in the moon. There was no difficulty in finding a shady place for our midday meal and rest; but I was glad when we moved on, for there was something as oppressive in the aspect of the pass as there was in the atmosphere. More graffiti were found and duly photographed; but wishing to get into a more open country I pushed on ahead. I was safe not to lose my225 way as long as I followed the tracks of previous caravans, which were plainly visible. After a couple of hours of this pass the black shiny rocks became hateful to me, and when I emerged into a wide valley again my spirits rose rapidly.
Ranges of sandstone rock were to the right and left of me, and though not as beautiful in form as the limestone cliffs of Der el-Bahri, they were congenial in colour, and set off the intense blue of the distant mountains.
My solitary ride had to come to an end when the road branched off on two sides of a range of hills on both of which were camel tracks, though not in equal quantities. There is no risking a wrong route in a wilderness such as this, so I chose a shady place, and felt proud when I induced my camel to go down on its knees. I tied up its foreleg in the approved fashion to stop its running away in case I might fall asleep. My companions might easily fail to see me, but they would be sure to catch sight of the camel.
I tried to analyse the charm of the desert, the ‘Call of the Desert,’ as Hichens aptly names it; for while I rested here its inexplicable charm pervaded my whole being. I am fond of my fellow-creatures and am in no wise cut out for the life of a hermit; besides, many lonely places exist far removed from desert wastes where solitude can still be enjoyed. It was not, therefore, the feeling of solitude that could alone explain the desert’s attraction, now that I had left behind me the oppressive blackness of the Mutrak es-Salam pass. A drowsiness soon began to displace my futile analysis,226 when a slight tickling of my ankle prevented me from felling asleep. My presence was being resented by a colony of ants whose operations I was impeding. I had to shift my position, and there being room enough for them as well as for myself in this vast desert, I returned those, which were exploring my leg, to their companions.
We were some fifty miles from any cultivation, except the little oasis where we had last camped, so what on earth could have induced these ants to choose this spot? The inexplicable charm of the desert would soon fizzle out were we cut off from water and provisions; and where could these ants have found either? I followed the trails, which started from the nest, to discover what means of subsistence they had, and found that some camel’s dung, buried beneath the sand-drift, was the ‘call’ which had attracted them so far.
Hardly an hour had passed since we left the Nile valley but we had seen some animal life. Birds follow the camel tracks and flies and beetles infest the Mabwala, or stations, where the caravans rest. These are often in the only shady places, and they often obliged us to take our midday meals in the blazing sun; for we could hardly add a tent to the load which was carried on Selim’s longsuffering camel. We had seen two butterflies that very morning, and accounted for them as having been carried here by the prevailing wind. A poor look-out for them, for the desert reaches to the Red Sea coast. The ants puzzled me, for I saw no signs of any organic matter when I chose my resting-place.
227 Meditations in this climate soon end in sleep, and I became unconscious of my surroundings till I heard my name being shouted. I looked up, and behold, my camel was gone, and following the track in the loose sand I saw Laura hobbling on three legs, about half a mile away, and making for the guide who rode the leading camel; my companions in the meanwhile were zigzagging across the valley to find me. When I caught the beast up and satisfied my friends that I was not lost, I made Laura go down on her knees to allow me to mount, and now all the cussedness of her camel nature showed itself. I had to undo the end of the halter which tied the foreleg into its bent position and also keep at a safe distance from Laura’s teeth. The instant I got it undone, up she would jump before I had a chance of getting my seat. She did this several times, till I was obliged to hang on to her as best I could and climb into my saddle while she moved off.
Canon Tristram says: ‘The camel is by no means an amiable animal, and its owner never seems to form any attachment to his beast, nor the animal to reciprocate kindness in any degree. I never found one camel valued above his fellow for intelligence or affection. A traveller always makes a friend of his horse, most certainly of his ass, sometimes of his mule, but never of his camel. I have made a journey in Africa for three months with the same camels, but never succeeded in eliciting the slightest token of recognition from one of them, or a friendly disposition for kindness shown.’ Canon Tristram never wrote truer words. Laura was a beast! I would do my best228 to get something for her to feed on, other than on her hump, when we should reach Kosseir; but no corner of my eye would moisten when Laura and I should part company.
When we got to a further reach in the valley, we were surprised to see some gazelle. This was more surprising than the ants, for surely gazelle could find neither fodder nor water here. That the poor creatures had been frightened further and further away from the cultivation was probable, but until they returned there nothing but a long fast awaited them; if they were making for the coast, nothing to feed on awaited them there. We were near enough to have shot some with a rifle, but I am glad to say that none of us had a rifle; we had even packed up our revolvers with the baggage. We regretted the latter for a moment the next day, but of this anon.
We reached a second Roman station as the shadows were lengthening; it was considerably smaller than the Hydreuma of the morning, and was also in a worse state of repair. We heeded it little beyond using one of the walls for our backs while Selim brewed us some tea. The guide climbed one of the hills to see if there was any sign of the baggage, and on his reporting that none was visible, we could take the next ten or twelve miles to B?r Hammamat at our ease. The colour of the landscape took extraordinary combinations as the sun declined, and as we again approached the blackish hills which contracted the caravan route.
The lower-lying sandstone hills turned a greyish violet, except where a roseate light caught their summits,229 and purple black hung about the base of the Hammamat mountains. The altitude of the latter being considerably more than any we had so far seen, the heights still reflected the light from the setting sun—a flame-colour split up in violet patches of shade. It was wonderful, but was it beautiful? Where strange combinations of colour and form are first seen, this question is often difficult to answer. We watched the dark shades rise and spread over these mountains till they told black against an ash-grey sky. The Rehenu Valley of the Egyptians was a spooky place to enter. Our path wound through great masses of breccia rock, and it contracted in places so that we could hardly ride abreast. The darkness increased till the camels of my companions were lost in the gloom, and the white helmets rising and falling with the motion of the beasts were soon all that I could see of our party.
Our track becoming quite invisible, there was just a chance that our Ababdi guide might take a wrong turning, and if once well out of the beaten road, in a wilderness such as this, it is doubtful whether we could find our way before our water-supply gave out.
The longed-for moon showed herself at last, and by her light we pursued our way to the well where we had settled to camp for the night. The valley opens up here to a considerable width, and the well, known as B?r Hammamat, is a conspicuous object in the centre. There was nothing now to do but to wait for our baggage camels, and to keep ourselves as warm as we could.
Our guide rode back to reconnoitre, and when we230 could distinguish an answer to his calls, other than the echo, we were filled with a sense of relief.
Lakéta is only thirty miles from B?r Hammamat, but with our crossing and recrossing the valleys in search of graffiti we must have ridden half again as far. Dinner and sleep, and an easy day to follow, were pleasant things to contemplate.