THE WADY FOWAKIYEH AND B?R HAGI SULIMAN
WE slumbered till the sun beat down on our tents. There was enough water obtainable to fill our collapsible baths to the brim, and good enough for the camels to drink—poor brackish stuff we should have found it, had we depended on it for our own consumption.
The well seemed an immense depth, and had a spiral staircase down it, though it was dangerous to descend more than a few yards. A mining company had of late years partially restored the building which stood over it, and for the first time since we left Luxor we saw the names of some fellow-countrymen who had put this well in workable order. Unfinished sarcophagi lay near by, with some flaws in the stone to account for their having been left here by the workmen of one of the Ptolemies.
We did not propose to travel more than a few miles that day, for the Wady Fowakiyeh, as the natives call it, is that part of the Hammamat valley where Lepsius and other former explorers made their greatest finds.
Now, as Mr. Weigall devotes to this valley many pages in his Travels in Upper Egyptian Deserts, I shall not attempt to describe what he has so ably given to the232 public. I will quote what he says of our arrival there, and of the earliest inscription which was found: ‘Amidst these relics of the old world our tents were pitched, having been removed from B?r Hammamat as soon as breakfast had been finished; and with camera, note-book, and sketching apparatus, the four of us dispersed in different directions, my own objective, of course, being the inscriptions. The history of Wady Fowakiyeh begins when the history of Egypt begins, and one must look back into the dim uncertainties of the archaic period for the first evidences of the working of the quarries of the valley. Many beautifully made bowls and other objects of this tuff are found in the graves of Dynasty I., fifty-five centuries ago; and my friends and I scrambling over the rocks were fortunate enough to find in a little wady leading northwards from the main valley a large rock-drawing and inscriptions of this date. A “vase-maker” here offers a prayer to the sacred barque of the hawk-god Horus, which is drawn so clearly that one may see the hawk standing upon its shrine in the boat, an upright spear set before the door; and one may observe the bull’s head, so often found in primitive countries, affixed to the prow; while the barque itself is shown to be standing upon a sledge in order that it might be dragged over the ground.’
Page 232
THE MOSQUE AT KOSSEIR
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233 By the modern German school of computation, which Mr. Weigall accepts, the period of the Shepherd Kings was but of two centuries’ duration; but according to the reckoning of the majority of Egyptologists, this period lasted a millennium longer. Should the latter be right these graffiti would date back sixty-five centuries; and from that remote period (with the exception of the dark ages known as that of the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings) some signs of human activity were visible in this valley, telling us something of the various peoples who ruled Egypt until the three Englishmen scratched their names with a penknife shortly after the British occupation.
Every collection of Egyptological objects will have some specimens of sculptured stone quarried out of these tufa and breccia rocks.
I found a large smooth surface of stone, forming the back wall of a hollow quarried out of a gigantic mass of breccia, which, in Ptolemaic times, had been made to serve as a shrine to the god Min of Koptos, the protecting deity of the Upper Egyptian deserts. There were signs that this shady nook had recently been used as an Arab encampment, and it suggested a delightful subject to paint. I was torn with conflicting emotions: whether to secure so good a background for a figure subject, or whether to join my companions in their search for arch?ological treasure. The background won the day. A faint hope that we might spend a second morning here on our return journey, which would make it possible to complete my study, finally decided me.
The smooth stone at the back of the hollow was decorated with very delicately incised Ptolemaic work. The spacing of the panels containing the deities was most artistically done, and the figures were chiselled with a delicacy and style not usually seen in work of that period. I had seen little Ptolemaic sculpture on any234 other material than on sandstone, and this was bound to look coarse compared to the eighteenth dynasty work on the finer grained limestone. The hard breccia rock surface gave the sculptor a chance; and though it lacked the distinction of earlier work, it compared well as to delicacy of treatment. Greek influence seemed more apparent than ever. Hathor looked less of a goddess, and was possibly more charming as a pretty little mortal; Ammon Ra without his headdress would have passed for a lithe and well-proportioned Greek slave; but the god Min, owing to his conventional pose, combined the Hellenic sensuosity with the severer Egyptian traditions. The Ptolemy who made offerings to the above trilogy was a Greek grandee in the pose and apparel of a Pharaoh. The figures measured about two feet high except that of an attendant priest, who, as modesty demanded, was a few inches shorter. There were one or two more panels in which Min figured conspicuously.
The bold forms of the massive rock which overhung this wall may have helped to emphasise the delicacy of the sculpture. The colour of the rock formation is as extraordinary as its drawing: the untouched portions are a chocolate brown, and those parts exposed by the work of the quarrymen vary from green to a bluish black.
When the sun shifted to where I sat, the effect changed so much that it seemed hardly worth risking sunstroke by continuing my study. My companions calling out their several discoveries tempted me to join in the hunt. So much of interest was crowded into the235 one day spent at Wady Fowakiyeh that the thirteenth day of November 1908 will remain as a landmark in my somewhat varied existence.
One long inscription, which Mr. Weigall interpreted, tells us of 10,000 men who were sent during the eleventh dynasty to work the quarries. Amongst this army of quarrymen there were miners, artists, draughtsmen, stone-cutters, gold-workers, and officials, and full directions were given as to the work they were sent to do. When one thought of the voices of this host of men, awakening the echoes of the cliff-bound valley, the present silence became almost oppressive. As the shades deepened with the declining sun, the impressiveness of our surroundings seemed to have got hold even of our escort. We could just hear them muttering their evening prayer, and when that was over nothing but the crackling of the fire, round which they sat, disturbed the stillness of the night.
Till this point in our journey, the road we trod is sufficiently hard and smooth to allow a motor-car to do it in three or four hours. We had now reached the highest part of the desert highway, but the incline is so imperceptible that only the aneroid could prove that we were on a greater altitude than when we left Qús. No motor-car could, however, cross the mile or two of boulders which choked up the road on which we made an early start the following morning. Most of this we did on foot, jumping from boulder to boulder, the men leading the camels a serpentine route or assisting them over the rocks which blocked the way. We followed up a narrow pass in the mountains to inspect the abandoned236 workings of the gold-mines. We soon came across some huts used by miners who had in quite recent years come here to glean where the early Egyptians had reaped a good harvest. The huts were already in worse repair than many we saw at the Roman Hydreuma. From what I have heard since, the modern working of these mines had soon been abandoned as a hopeless task. There are, however, other mines north of these which are now worked at a profit.
We decided to continue on this pass and join the main route to Kosseir a few miles further on, the baggage train, of course, following the usual caravan road. Our guide declared that he knew the road, so there seemed nothing to apprehend. Nevertheless we took the precaution of leaving a trail behind us, as boys do on a paperchase, for there were tracks in the sand of other camels than our own, and the road, such as it was, split up into several winding passes through the hills. As one of our party had chosen to follow the baggage, we decided to send back Selim to the main highway to tell him when and where we expected to join him, and Selim had also instructions to prepare our midday meal at that spot.
The landscape became more extraordinary than ever when we left the tuff and breccia rocks behind us. On either side of us rose sandstone cliffs worn into the most fantastic shapes. It is difficult to associate rain with such a country as the one we were in, yet rain and nothing else could have worn this stone into the shapes we now beheld. An inscription which Weigall had carefully copied described a torrential237 shower which descended on the quarrymen in early dynastic times, and which they considered a good omen of a successful issue to their labours. Rain descends at long intervals, but during periods as counted by geologists an immense amount of water had fashioned these sandstone rocks into their unearthly shapes, for no growth is here to impede the action of the torrential streams.
We wound amongst these hills for two or three hours, and I was delighted when we regained the highway and returned to less strange, though more beautiful scenery. But where was Selim? We fortunately could see our companion in the distance, while the baggage camels which he followed were disappearing round an angle in the range of hills. We managed to make him hear, and he rode back to meet us. He had neither seen nor heard anything of our cook, and had the latter followed the trail he should have joined the main body a couple of hours ago. Our guide went back to try to find the lost cook, and as he was born to the desert, we had little fear of losing him. After a hunt of a couple of hours the guide returned, hoping that Selim might have found his way to us by the main road. There was nothing to be done but to send the guide back to try some of the passes which he had considered too unlikely for the cook to have taken.
It was awkward to lose the man on whom depends your midday meal. But worse than a long day’s fast was the possibility that the man had completely lost his bearings, in which case, his bones and those of his mount might, at the time I am writing, be bleaching in the238 desert surrounded by his pans and kettles as well as by our sketching and photographic paraphernalia.
About four o’clock a clatter, clatter awoke us from a doze we had indulged in under the shade of a projecting rock. The cook had turned up at last, still trembling with the danger of being lost which he had experienced, and also expecting a blowing up for being so late with our lunch. A puff of wind had, it appeared, blown some of our paper trail over a low hillock into a pass which we had not taken, and seeing camel tracks there he followed it up and got lost in the labyrinth amongst the sandstone cliffs. Though he rode his camel well, his practice had hitherto been confined to the cultivated land where he could hardly go a quarter of a mile without meeting some one to direct his way.
We made a hasty meal, for we had a long ride before we could reach our night’s camping-place. We passed two more Roman stations, but could not give them much time. The scenery increased in grandeur and beauty, for the Hammamat mountains we had left behind us are in truth more extraordinary than beautiful. A high range of limestone mountains caught the evening light, while the meaner hills in the foreground were lost in a subtle grey-violet shade.
Twilight is of short duration, and not long after admiring the after-glow on the limestone heights, we had to trace our way in no other light than that from the starlit sky.
When we reached our halting-place for the night we found our tents pitched, table set, and our meal239 ready to be served up. Selim had got over his fright, and was anxious to do his best to make up for the inconvenience he had put us to during the day; the Ababdi guide likewise arrived before we turned in for the night. Our camp was near another Roman station, known by the name of the well close by, B?r Hagi Suliman. Whatever else of interest there may be in a desert highway, the vital importance of water (even though it be brackish) is such that the name of the supply is the name the district is known by. Beer runs this close in London, judging from the names of public-houses being so conspicuous on any omnibus route. Should you ask an Ababdi Arab where the Hydreuma was he would shrug his shoulders; but if you mention a well, el B?r, anywhere within fifty miles, he will be able to direct you. The similarity in the name of their water-supplies to that of the British favourite drink is a curious coincidence.
The domed enclosure of the B?r Hagi Suliman was in good repair, and a tablet in the wall bore these three names and a date: ‘Briggs, Hancock, and Wood, 1832.’ Probably the names of three Englishmen who were prospecting for gold in these regions.
We decided the next morning to follow the caravan road, and that we should return from Kosseir by a second route which joins this one near the well. No arch?ological find was as welcome as the first rays of sun which fell on our perishing bodies. To get out of the cold wind and creep along the rocks which first caught the morning sun was our only thought. One is obliged to dress in thin summer clothes, as these240 valleys are very hot by the time the sun is high in the heavens. I strapped enough blankets round me to give me the appearance of a well-packed breakable object stowed on the top of a camel, and I kept near the useful Selim, so as to enable him to catch the blankets as I shed them. I had hardly got down to my cotton suit when we arrived at another Roman station. It seemed as difficult to avoid Roman ruins here as to get away from trippers in the Nile valley. Some Cufic inscriptions on a doorpost interested us the most, as an indication of this route being used soon after the Mohammedan conquest of Egypt. Our ornithologist had his sketch-book out to note the flight of some sandgrouse which rose from amongst the ruins as we entered them.
We had met but one or two nomad Arabs since we left the oasis of Lakéta, so that our interest was considerably excited when we perceived a considerable caravan advancing towards us in the distance. They were undoubtedly Arabs from the Hedjaz who had crossed the Red Sea to barter their camels in the Nile valley—queer customers for so small a party to meet in this lonely place. We were miles ahead of our baggage train, and I found that my companions had, as I had done, packed their revolvers in their kit-bags. We consoled ourselves with the thought that our want of precaution would not be suspected by the people we were approaching, and I was more anxious to get a shot at them with a hand camera than with any more deadly weapon. They were a most picturesque lot, and might have posed for a group of Hyksos invaders, or, to come to modern times (which only their long-barrelled guns suggested), they might have been a small host of the Midianite Arabs who plunder the pilgrims on the Mecca road. Some of their womenfolk were with them, but enclosed in litters on the camels’ humps.
Page 240
DOORWAY IN THE TEMPLE OF ISIS
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241 I managed with difficulty to get a couple of snapshots: the head of my own camel had to be avoided, and I wished not to attract too much attention from the evil-looking men, who greeted neither us nor the two Arab servants in our party—a most unusual occurrence anywhere in the Near East.
The first bit of news we heard, when we got back to Luxor, was that a party of three Egyptians had been attacked by Arabians travelling from Kosseir to Keneh, and the date given was that of the day after we had met these people. One Egyptian had been killed, and the two others had managed to escape. The attacking party could have been no other than the one we passed. Whether they were ever brought to justice, or whether they were able to recross the Red Sea and get safe back to the Hedjaz, I was never able to ascertain. Little news, except that which an occasional European paper gave us, reached my camp at Der el-Bahri when I was reinstalled there.
We halted at midday at a well in an open plain. B?r el-Ingliz, as this well is called, and also the names of two Frenchmen, on a rock near by, and dated 1799, vaguely recalled some incidents in the fight between France and England during the Napoleonic wars. Desaix, who commanded the French troops in Upper Egypt 1799, must have sent his men by this route to242 garrison the still existing fort at Kosseir. We know of no record that the young French general was ever at Kosseir himself; but we know that in January 1800 both Desaix and Kleber signed the convention of el-Arish, six months after Buonaparte had left Egypt. The two Frenchmen, Forcard and Materon, whose names we find near the well, were therefore in all probability returning with a detachment from Kosseir to join Desaix before he went north to el-Arish. The English could not have restored this well till two years later, as it was not till May 1801 that an Anglo-Indian force, under Baird, landed at Kosseir and drove the garrison back into the desert.
Though the well is known as B?r el-Ingliz, it is probable that the English put an already existing one into working order, and built the well-house as a protection to it. Some of its slightly brackish water may have been the cause of these Frenchmen resting here.
A magnificent range of limestone cliffs, which came into view soon after our rest, shut us off from any glimpse we might have had of the sea. These were the finest mountains I had seen in Egypt; their formation is very similar to that of the Der el-Bahri cliffs, but they were more imposing from their greater altitude.
As we approached the northern extremity of the range, a patch of vivid green had a singular attraction for us, and hastened the trot of our camels. It could not be a mirage, for the form that phenomenon took, as far as our experience went, was that of reflecting, in what appeared water, objects above our horizon. Our Ababdi guide knew it as the B?r Ambagi. We had been only a few243 days in the desert; but we felt some of the excitement of pilgrims in the wilderness who, after a prolonged journey, catch their first glimpse of a land of Canaan. Our oasis turned out to be nothing more than a mass of rushes surrounding some pools of water; it was, however, a refreshing sight to our eyes, and possibly more refreshing to the stomachs of our camels—there was not much left of Laura’s hump when I had last taken observations.
A half-dozen goats—sole milk-supply of Kosseir, as we later on found out—grazed peacefully here, while the young goat-herds stared round-eyed at the newcomers.
The air we breathed was different, and though no air is purer than that of the desert, there was something singularly exhilarating in that which was here. The sea, which we could not yet catch a glimpse of, had sent its breezes to welcome us to its shores.
On remounting our camels we followed the dry bed of a river—a wash-out,—and after descending it for a few miles, we turned the corner of some low-lying sand-hills, and the Red Sea was before us. How intensely blue it looked! I had not at that time gone down the Red Sea, or I might have been prepared for its being no redder than a blue band-box. It is just as well that its colour was no other, for no sight could have given us greater pleasure. We kept our camels at the trot, and it looked as if we should be there in half an hour. The low white houses of Kosseir were on our left horizon, with some huge ugly erection over-topping them. In a couple of hours we cleared the244 sandy waste, and jumped off our camels on the strand.
One of our party threw off his clothes to have a swim, in spite of our warning him that the water might be infested with sharks. ‘I’ll risk it anyhow,’ he called out, and we watched him splashing about with mixed feelings of sour grapes. Weigall sent our guide with a note to the Mudir to tell him of our arrival, and Selim lighted the spirit lamp to prepare our tea. We strolled some way along the beach, when we came on the body of a young shark, with its throat cut, lying on the edge of the water, and our looks at our venturesome companion silenced his boastings of how he had enjoyed his bathe.